On Mar 3, 2004, at 12:23 PM, Aaron Lanterman wrote:
>
> But even after all that... stick a complicated line of Smalltalk in 
> front
> of me, and I freeze in bewilderment for at least a few seconds, and 
> then
> if I very carefully step through each token at a time, and write in
> parentheses (if I'm reading a book) or type in parentheses (if I'm
> actually at a Squeak browser) according to the precedence rules: unary
> first, binary second, message third. I find reading Smalltalk to be 
> slow
> and painful. I feel like the language turns me into a human parser, 
> and I
> feel the Ls and Rs and numbers percolate in my brain.

Just be glad you're not using Self...

foo at: 1 Put: bar at: 3

is

foo at: 1 Put: (bar at: 3).

Why?  Capitalization...

To tie this in with the pretty printing discussion - has anyone done 
any work on graphical cues for precedence that are less intrusive than 
parens?  I'm thinking of things like subtly adjusting the spacing so 
that unary selectors are slightly closer to their receivers, etc.

Avi