Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
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From: demars@netcom.com (Dennis D.)
Subject: Re: dot syntax confusion NOT!
Message-ID: <demars-1602961839450001@10.0.2.15>
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References: <v02110100ad4929891061@[17.130.22.234]>
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 02:39:45 GMT
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In article <v02110100ad4929891061@[17.130.22.234]>, KenD@apple.com (Ken
Dickey) wrote:

>At 8:53 PM 2/13/96, Dennis D. wrote:
>>I don't think the problem is the dot notation, but the decision to allow
>>"-" in indentifiers.
>
>Dennis,
>
>While I understand your problem, I don't have it.  It is an accident of
>your provincial history.  The langauges I learned first were imperative
>(FORTRAN IV, Pascal, K&R C) but after many years of Scheme,  where
>"ready-yet?" is a valid identifier, I find use of readyYetP barely readable
>and ready_yet_P barely writable (all that shifting!).  Unlike some others
>here, I find this-thing.sub-thing.inner-most to be quite readable.
>
>Change must be practiced to become natural.  Practice!
>
>Cheers,
>-Ken

Actually, my prediliction to interpret "-" as a minus sign stems from its
universal use as such in mathematical notation; this is what FORTRAN, C,
et. al. are trying to emulate. 

For that matter, Dylan uses the operator "-" in the same way, but also
allows it and other operators imbedded in identifiers. I had though it was
obvious that allowing important tokens in the language to be used in
identifiers also would slow down perception of the tokens and therefore
impair readability; but I can see now that I was just a victim of
provicialism. 

- Dennis D.

P.S. I wouldn't object to ready_yet? and I don't mind shifting a few times
to enhance readability. All of you guys complaining about shifting: you
sound like a bunch of C programmers!

P.P.S. Despite my multiple messages on the subject, I don't really think
it's that big of a deal that the identifiers have hyphens. I would prefer
otherwise, but I'm not fanatical on the subject. I don't think Scheme and
Lisp are the ideal languages of all time though, and I think in future
languages we should borrow what is good about these languages and leave
behind what doesn't work well (Dylan acutally does this for the most part,
this hyphen business is a quibble), and I don't think that a good argument
for retaining a sub-optimal feature is that a bunch of Scheme programmers
got used to that feature.
