For programmers new to M it does not take a long time to acclimate to the one letter for commands but it would be nice if they were spelled out because especially in M they are, for the most part self descriptive, $piece gets you a piece of something but $P I really do not have a clue. What makes Vista hard to read and most old M code is the one name variables that you have to look up. Descriptive variable names make reading code, no matter what language much easier.
Thanks Marc Aylesworth C3I Associates AFRL/IFSE Joint Battlespace Infosphere Team 525 Brooks Rd Rome, NY 13441-4505 Tel:315.330.2422 Fax:315.330.7009 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kevin Toppenberg Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 9:59 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Hardhats-members] Re: Command abbreviations/Re: mpsEdit - IDE for MUMPS GT.M programmers. The only way to "prove" which is better would be to do some sort of controlled study of persons new to M and asking which way is easier to learn. But as a newcomer myself, I think that making M as similar to other languages as possible is desirable. And I don't know of any other modern language that uses single letters for its commands. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... :-) Kevin On 8/15/05, Gregory Woodhouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I suspect that one problem is that since MUMPS is not highly regarded > in some circles, we MUMPS programmers have a tendency to be overly > defensive at times, and respond negatively to suggestions that would > tend to dilute what e perceive as MUMPS' distinctiveness. This is > unfortunate for a number of reasons. One, of course, is that it > doesn't "play well" outside the community. But a more serious issue > is that it stands in the way of properly appreciating what MUMPS has > to offer and, to be honest, it has a tendency to lead us to > (unintentionally, of course) undersell ourselves. > > If I were teaching programming, would I use MUMPS? No. But are there > features of the language that I think could make it valuable both > pedagogically and as a research tool? Yes, absolutely. There are > simply concepts that are both difficult to teach and difficult to use > in languages such as C. I like C very much, and it is a language I > would encourage everyone to learn, but MUMPS includes facilities not > present in languages like C that can be extremely valuable. It is no > accident that dynamic languages like Perl and Python have remained so > popular -- they include language features that have proven to be > extremely valuable in some situations, and the same is true of MUMPS. > === > Gregory Woodhouse > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "A practical man is a man who practices the errors of his > forefathers. -- Benjamin Disraeli > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO > September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices > Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA > Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf > _______________________________________________ > Hardhats-members mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members > ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
