Question

Reserved words are keywords which will not be used for identifier. For example, Java reserved words include for, while, if and etc. What are the disadvantages of having “too many reserved words”?

Answer 1

1.    If it language has too many reserved words, then a program in this language is more difficult to write.

Example: In these days programs are based on real life i.e. programming is used to solve real world problem. If we use most of the common used word as reserved then this will create a problem in writing the program.

2. Suppose a student wants to create an application containing data about the universe and if some of the words like sun, earth,planets etc. are made reserved then it will be a diffcult task for the programmer to write the program. Also if he use some other term like blue_planet in place of earth then it might require some effort for other programmer or reader to understand the program.

3.    A programmer has to learn all the reserved words to avoid error while writing the program.

4.    If a new person cames to know that this particular programming language having 1000's of reserved word, then he might think little before learning it because it will be a diffult to task to remember these many keyword.

5.    If the programming language has too many reserved keyword then less number of people will learn it and use it and thus the popularity of the programming language will lead down.