HI Ken, My priority for NetLogo has always been the classic “low threshold and high ceiling”. But when pressed, the “low threshold” side is more important to me for many reasons, including those you have articulated here.
—Uri Uri Wilensky > On Mar 3, 2016, at 9:05 PM, Ken Kahn <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think we need to be conservative when comes to growing the language. I see > four kinds of events: (1) experts writing code (2) experts reading code (3) > plain folk writing code and (4) plain folk reading code. I think (4) is the > most common and non-experts already find square brackets confusing enough. > There already is too much for non-experts to master before being able to say > extend a small sample model. > > As an expert I might enjoy writing code this way but I'm pretty neutral when > it comes to reading code. > > Also I see multiple assignment as a slippery slope. Next someone will want > set [a b | c] [1 2 3 4] where c is bound to [3 4]. And eventually one gets a > full pattern matching facility. > > Best, > > -ken > > On 3 March 2016 at 05:11, Robert Grider <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > Alan, > > Thanks for the suggestion. The NetLogo developers discussed this idea and we > agree that it is often difficult to name variables in NetLogo. At the moment, > we think modifying "set" in this way would make it harder to use since it > would give "set" related functions distinguished primarily by syntax. We also > thought modifying "set" in this way would make it more difficult to create a > clear error message for users if it caused any errors. > > One thing that could help make this easier is a new feature we'll introduce > in the next major version of NetLogo. We're introducing a new primitive > datatype "code blocks" for use by extensions. A code block is a list of > tokens which are passed to the primitive at runtime but constructed using > square brackets, like NetLogo literal lists. Using code blocks it would be > possible to write an extension primitive which behaved somewhat similarly to > what you're suggesting here. > > Thanks, > Robert > > > On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 3:33:47 PM UTC-6, Alan Isaac wrote: > One thing I really miss from other high-level languages is multiple > assignment. > It seems like allowing > set [var01 var02] mylist > (when the two list are equal length) would not create any syntactical > ambiguity. > Is there any interest in this? > > Thanks, > Alan Isaac > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "netlogo-devel" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "netlogo-devel" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "netlogo-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
