On Tue, Aug 15, 2000 at 05:20:11PM -0400, John Porter wrote:
> Dan Sugalski wrote:
> >
> > The ultimate target of a program's source code is the *programmer*.
> > Programmers, being people (well, more or less... :), work best with symbols
> > and rich context. Stripping contextual clues out of code does the
> > programmer a disservice.
>
> Then every proposal so far which would eliminate distinguishing symbols,
> and/or the things they distinguish, is on the wrong track, eh? Yep.
Maybe. The point often missed is that the prefix carries information,
it's not there just to annoy. If I have no prefixes and have code
like this:
foo = func(bar, zog)
I have no idea what foo, bar, and zog are, without jumping back
through the block beginnings, maybe even to the file level, to
find the darn definitions. Compare with
%foo = func($bar, @zog)
I still don't know all but I do know more.
"We want to get rid of linenoise because the other language X does not
have linenoise" is kind of poor argument because it easily draws the
retort "Well, you know where to find X is, then. This is Perl."
> --
> John Porter
--
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# There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
# It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
