On 19/07/2008, at 11:36 PM, Michael Ash wrote:

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 1:14 AM, Rick Mann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Jul 18, 2008, at 21:51:57, Jerry Krinock wrote:

setEp1: should work. The colon is significant and is a part of the method
name.

In fact, I do have the colon in the actual definition. Definitely something
else is going on, I think.

I would advise you to embrace and learn both the dot syntax and square
brackets.

Well, I'm forced to use the square brackets for method calls (excuse me, "message sends"), and I love square brackets as array index operators. I
don't think I'll ever embrace them for method dispatch.

The universe of programming languages extends far beyond this little
island of ALGOL-lookalikes. Objective-C messaging syntax is utterly
mundane compared to many common, useful syntaxes used in practical
(but different) languages every day. IMO you do yourself a disservice
if you don't branch out and try some different things once in a while,
and remember that they're just programming languages, and syntax is
just syntax, nothing really all that important.

Except that syntax is the medium to convey meaning, thus to make it easier for others to understand what a program is about. If it were not so, we may as well have stuck to programming machine language in 1s and 0s. Thus syntax is important... or at least the manifestation of that which is important.

I like a Steve Jobs quote from 1996: “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” Clean syntax reflects clean functionality. The bracket syntax of Objective-C reflects the fact that it was a preprocessor rather than compiler. C's syntax reflects the fact that much unnecessary implementation detail could not be handled by a 1960s PDP 8 compiler. Of course, C.A.R. Hoare did quip that ALGOL was an improvement not only on its predecessors, but on most of its successors as well.

Ian_______________________________________________

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