> Hehe... and to think this whole line of discussion started because
> someone advocates list() over () when the latter, IMO, is better because
> the former is redundant. That's what it comes down to, really. *shrug*
Most syntax is redundant.
($var1, $var2) = foo();
might as well be written as:
var1,var2=foo
No point having the brackets there. The spaces are also redundant of
course. And so are the dollar signs.
You could continue along these lines until you determine that all
scripting languages are redundant and you might as well code directly in C
until you discover C is redundant as well and go straight to assembly.
Scripting languages exist exactly because they are higher-level (redundant
if you will) layers that present more human-friendly interfaces to the
underlying complexities. Removing all redundancy in a scripting language
and turning it into a series of 1 or 2 character mneumonics almost
completely eliminates the whole reason for using a scripting language.
Once you learn this set of meaningless mneumonics you can get things done
a bit quicker than someone using a more verbose language.
However, consider why computers don't ship with stenograph-style
keyboards. An experienced stenographer can type circles around any
regular typist, but the learning curve for becoming an experienced
stenographer is rather steep. It makes more sense to ship computers with
keyboards that don't require such a learning curve. Just like it makes
sense to keep the amount of magic meaningless mneumonics to a minimum in a
scripting language.
-Rasmus
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