At 3:05 PM -0400 24/3/07, John Kubie wrote: >As a fairly-recent beginner, my 2 cents. > >I've learned to find dictionaries amazingly useful. As a number of >people have pointed out, having a function return a dictionary >eliminates many of the problems. > >But dictionaries have their own problems. It took me a long time to >begin using dictionaries because the syntax is awkward. I haven't >thought thru alternatives, or why the syntax is the way it is, but it >is awkward. Most programming syntax is verbal; I generally sub- >vocalize as I type a line of code and the syntax makes rough sense. >But I haven't gotten to this stage with dictionaries. I still look to >examples and cut-and-paste. > >Dictionaries seem almost to be a solution. But, for the beginner, >their problem is their syntax. > >So, to expand the question somewhat, is there a way that dictionaries >could have more compact and human-readable syntax? >
I couldn't agree more John. The speed of dictionaries is great but the syntax is awfully confusing. I am forever going back to working version of dictionary code to copy and paste. For some reason, the current syntax just never makes sense to me. Maybe we should fix this ourselves, using the 'extends' keyword to modify the dictionary object syntax. (It might even show us why the syntax is the way it is?) -- Cheers, Dr Gerard Hammond MacSOS Solutions _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
