Re: [PD] style guide idea: [send foo] versus [; foo(

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Mar 20, 2009, at 5:51 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:

--- On Fri, 3/20/09, Hans-Christoph Steiner <h...@eds.org> wrote:

From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <h...@eds.org>
Subject: Re: [PD] style guide idea: [send foo] versus [; foo(
To: "dmotd" <dm...@gmx.net>
Cc: pd-list@iem.at
Date: Friday, March 20, 2009, 5:25 PM
I am not proposing to limit the use of dollar args in
message boxes for dynamic sends, that is a very useful
feature. The example you give here, though, is an example of
a shortcut for typing, there is no other benefit that I can
see.

And at the risk of sounding pedantic, I am going to quote
one of my favorite ideas relating to code: "Programs
should be written for people to read, and only incidentally
for machines to execute".  Typing shortcuts like this
message box below almost never save time when you look at
the whole picture.  Code is read far more times than it is
written, so really we should be optimizing for reading
rather than writing.

Could you give an example that is more readable than the message box below?

The key part is that [trigger] is the essential way in Pd to represent execution order. As Frank says: "use [trigger]s everywhere". Then by breaking out the messages into their own message boxes, you can clearly see what the messages that are being send separately from their destination.

init.pd
Description: Binary data

.hc

Having lines of text execute in top-to-bottom may be more readable for code like Java, C, etc., but Pd uses right-to-left to represent execution order, hence trigger.

-Jonathan

In Pd, [trigger] is the central mechanism for specifying
execution order.  Therefore, in the interest of readability,
[trigger] should be used as much as possible.

Clearer documentation of the messages boxes would also be a
great thing.  But you almost anything without ever using a
semi-colon in a message box, they are mostly used as a
typing shortcut, and many people are confused by them, so I
think we should really be limiting them to things like
dynamic sends, since that is hard to do in other ways.

.hc

On Mar 20, 2009, at 1:32 AM, dmotd wrote:

hmm.. generally this could be a good idea, but message

sending is most useful

when initialising a number of receives ie:

[loadbang]
|
|; init-1 6          /
|; init-2 symbol foo |
|; init-3 -2         \

which is far more elegant than the the trigger/send

replacement, especially

with more fields..

i think its important for students to recognise that

this feature of messaging

has a role to play, rather than trying to veil its

use. in my experience

people will tend to use [send foo] more often when

they start pd, then begin

abbreviating to [s foo] before they appreciate the msg

shorthand [; foo[. but

you are right it is a little confusing for new users..

perhaps this just needs clearer documenting? 'what

does a semi-colon at the

start of a message mean?' in the FAQ?

dmotd

On Friday 20 March 2009 10:38:06 Hans-Christoph

Steiner wrote:

Here's something that I'd like to propose

for the style guide, based

on my teaching experience:

- use [send foo]  instead of [; foo( for all sends

that aren't

dynamically set

A lot of people find the [; foo( syntax confusing,

and since it is

commonly used, it often gets in the way of newbies

understanding the

patch.  While the [; foo( syntax is definitely

useful for dynamic

sends, I don't think there is an advantage to

using for the regular

sends.  So for example:

[dsp 1(

[send pd]

instead of

|;                /
|pd dsp 1 \

This change highlights the dataflow aspect of the

messages over the

text-style programming with syntax of the message

box.  At the very

least, I think that the help patches should use

this style, and I have

started to use this style in my regular

programming and it feels quite

natural once you are used to it.  I find it easier

to read.

(as for [s foo] versus [send foo] that's an

issue I want to avoid in

this discussion).

.hc

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The arc of history bends towards justice.     -

Dr. Martin Luther

King, Jr.



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