> > ##readline vs. readln > Seems like a lot asking for just 2 characters or even talking about it. > It does make a difference though; It does distinguish Julia from other > languages. Does it need those 2 letters? It does feel clearer, but at > what expense? I'm not sure actually. But consider *JQuery*'s ***$***. > it's just an alias for ****jquery***; the sole reason for its existence is > so people don't have to type 5 extra letters. But then, that's 5 letters, > not 2, and it so many people use JQuery, it saves thousands of man-hours. >
I believe there is a fine line between language conciseness and tooling. Personally I prefer reading a whole word than non standard abbreviations. Please note I mentioned *reading*, not writing. If your tooling (IDE) is good, you should never have to write long parameter names or keywords or function names, it should do all that for you. (You should also be able to create shortcuts for very common words. e.g. J + space, should automatically write out JQuery). So having code that reads well and is self documenting is more valuable than really clever abbreviations that only a few people can decipher. (Sure readln is not that bad, but once you start abbreviating everything, where do you stop? If 2 characters are really that important then why not save another 3 and just shorten readln() to rln()). I have read code with long (meaningful) parameter names and function names and have also read code where all the parameters are of the form a1, a2, b1, b2, etc.. and function names such as dfg(), hfp() etc... and I know which I prefer *reading* and collaborating with. In summary I feel tooling can bridge the gap and keep everyone happy.
