Re: Re: Briskets (perl)
Re: Re: Briskets (perl)
- Subject: Re: Re: Briskets (perl)
- From: Lachlan Deck <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 10:59:15 +1000
Hi there,
From: Lee Azzarello <email@hidden>
If I may, I'd like to get a feeling about code literacy and plain
english
metaphors. I'm just picking up AppleScript and I'm noticing that the
"plain english" thing is more deceptive than it seems. Assuming there
are
many seasoned programmers on this list, I'm curious what people's
opionins
are of languages that attenpt to use this plain-engligh/natural-language
thing when it comes to programming a computer. Is it worth it? Or does
it
further obfucate code literacy?
Example: I know smalltalk (and variations thereof like Squeak and
SuperCollider). It took me a pretty long time to grasp the OO metaphors
but when I got it, I got it, and i could apply it to other OO languages.
Okay - seeing as you know other languages and OO then what you should do
to get a handle on things is goto the following site to read up on
AS...(this site should be at the top of each digest e-mail or
something ;-))
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Carbon/interapplicationcomm/AppleScript/
AppleScriptLangGuide/index.html
It will give you a good grasp of things...seriously...
Personally I think AS has a lot going for it and is a very worthwhile
tool to have in your kit. i.e., if you want to work productively using
various applications (that support AS) then more often than not you will
find that AS will do the job better than something else - because it can
talk to multiple apps.
There's a lot of power in there that can be used - but sure there are
frustrating things as well...e.g., the documentation could do with a
revamp. Too often (not as in all the time) a Dictionary definition for a
function is ambiguous and so it takes a bit of fiddling and
experimenting in order to figure out how it works. This is a far cry
from the Cocoa docs for example - where you can see exactly what a
class/method will do and what you expect should be the result - and what
parameters it needs.
But I expect that AS can only get better and better - now that it's been
integrated into Project Builder, I'm sure Apple has plans to continue
improving its usability with OS X.
with regards,
--
Lachlan Deck
email@hidden
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