Troy..... I don't think you're being fair. I completely disagreed with your *point*; you turned that into a personal attack on me, suggesting that I have some sort of weird idea of what a language should support that is somehow at odds with "everyone" (else). You made a comment to Richmond in another instance of this thread about forgetting "how this list is." It seems to me that at least in this case, you've contributed to that.
What I disagreed with was your contention that verbose = arcane. That's all. I've even grudgingly agreed with your main thrust about an alternate syntax as long as it doesn't interfere with existing verbosity, which I find more readable. And to your point about not all code being written for community review, I don't disagree, but I would suggest that sometimes code that one writes in a terse and (to me) arcane language becomes unreadable to its programmer some time down the road. For example, to me, Perl code that is uncommented but otherwise "well crafted" (as judged by a Perl pro) is write-only code. I can pick up an xTalk script I wrote years ago and understand what's going on in part because the verbosity of the language makes it to some extent (and clearly not completely) self-documenting. The same is true of my true favorite language, Smalltalk, which is *truly* verbose. Maybe it's just because I'm a writer first and a software developer second that I prefer these verbose languages, Troy, but it's not because I think my view ought to hold sway over "everyone." And I think the discussion here ought to be sufficient to convince you that your view -- which you'd like to prevail as well -- isn't accepted or agreed with by "everyone", either. On 7/11/06, Troy Rollins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Jul 12, 2006, at 12:46 AM, Dan Shafer wrote: > Completely disagree. So... in other words, the language should suit specifically *you* rather than *everyone*. Director has 3 complete syntaxes. They are ALL in use. I've never heard of anyone being bothered by the existence of the two they don't use. It simply doesn't come up as an issue. How would x = 5 create problems for you if you could still PUT 5 into x? I personally find verbose arcane. Disagree all you like. > Verbose tends to be far more readable by more people > with less detailed knowledge of the language and system. So? Not all software is written to be handed around for community review. Some of it is just solitary programming and getting stuff done. We're not all writing eBooks about it. You may be surprised to hear, at least some of us use Revolution DESPITE of its language, not because of it. I'm sure that many experienced developers have abandoned it entirely due to the arcane- seeming syntax in contrast to virtually every other language out there. "Bah! We don't need 'em!" What exactly is the proven benefit of keeping verbose languages "verbosely pure" again? -- Troy RPSystems, Ltd. http://www.rpsystems.net _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author http://www.shafermedia.com Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html
_______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
