On 10/06/2015 12:07 AM, Mark Waddingham wrote:
My personal feeling (having observed people's interaction with the language for a long time) is that variant forms of syntax which do the same thing actually make things harder to learn and understand - it makes the dictionary larger and increases the vocabulary for no real benefit.
I believe Churchill said the same thing about Basic English <g>.
Other forms which are no longer allowed are things like: repeat with x = 1 to 5 with messages This has no function at all - the 'with messages' is ignored - indeed I think a couple of people have found bugs in their scripts as a result.
Yeah. that would be me. Thank you for fixing that one. I do like having the compiler tell me when I've done something stupid.
Whilst strictness might reduce 'personal expression' to some extent, I do think it helps the learning and remembering process. It means everyone uses the same forms to do the same things - making reading each others code, and helping each other out easier.
OK - playing Devil's Advocate here... I think one of the strengths of the xtalk language is that there may be many different paths to the solution of any given problem. I've learned a lot, and continue to do so, by seeing how other people approach issues differently from the way I would. So this artificial restriction cuts down on exploratory coding and places limits on the creative process of algorithm development.
-- Mark Wieder ahsoftw...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
