fixing undescores
Fournier Eric
emf at umn.edu
Tue Oct 18 18:05:26 UTC 2005
Observations on the assignment operator thread:
Choosing an orthographic representation for a language based on
terseness or easiness to type it in leads to ... Perl (widely held as
a 'write-only' ie unreadable language). The characters will be read
(by a human) many more times than typed. Choose readable clarity over
typing convenience.
Anytime you leave basic ASCII you limit your portability. Wasting
time converting characters is ... wasting time. There _are_ good
reasons for internal representations to be more complex. We don't
have them here. Design as simply as possible.
We should think about adoption (not among us--among them). ':=' is
widely recognized as an assignment. Lower the entry threshold for
adoption by the world where possible.
The same argument holds for using the up-arrow '^' replacement for
return. '^ foo' should be 'return foo' IMO because it reads
unambiguously. Typing convenience can be accomplished using keyboard
macro widgets (QuicKeys comes to mind).
-Eric
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