Yes ... not to keep this discussion alive or anything, but that's how many
Perl programmers feel, in my experience. We think more like Perl than
AppleScript. Other people think more like AppleScript. While we can pity
them ;-), it ends up being just how different people have different
preferences and goals and ways of thinking etc.
Just to add another persons point of view to the conversation. I learned
Hypertalk's English-like syntax before I learned perl, but probably
after languages like C, Fortran, BASIC, and Pascal. (Now that I think
about it, before there was a perl to learn) I knew Hypertalk well enough
to get paid for developing Hypercard based programs. Applescript on the
other hand, still tends to confuse me. I think the problem arises because
the syntax of the language and a large chunk of the semantics is split
between the Applescript interpreter and the scripting dictionary of
the application it should control
In general, English-like programming languages tend to earn the title of read-only languages nearly as well as perl detractors complain about it being a write-only language. If you see correct Applescript code, it is nearly always obvious what it should do, but trying to determine the correct syntax that works with both the AppleScript interpreter and the Applications dictionary is often tough.
Seeing something like:
tell application "AppleWorks 6"
set myDocument to make new document at front with properties {document kind:text document}
tell myDocument to make the text at end with properties {font:"Helvetica", size:12} with data "Hello World"
end tell
You can tell it makes a new Appleworks document and fills it with some text.
But this doesn't work:
tell application "AppleWorks 6"
make new document at front with kind text document
set myDocument to it
tell myDocument to make text at end with data "Hello World" and with Font "Helvetica" and with size 12
end tell
and it isn't obvious to me why not.
Frankly, I find Applescript tougher than the Infocom interpreter, but the problems seem similar.
