Re: is "tell" dead?
Re: is "tell" dead?
- Subject: Re: is "tell" dead?
- From: 2551 <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:59:09 +0700
On 24 Oct 2013, at 16:15, Nigel Garvey <email@hidden> wrote:
> Shane Stanley wrote on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 16:47:16 +1100:
>
>> On 23 Oct 2013, at 4:35 PM, 2551 <email@hidden> wrote:
>>
>>> is the “tell” statement
>>> effectively redundant now
>>> (aside from the exception of ‘using’ an app without importing it)?
>>
>> I wouldn't say redundant -- more largely avoidable.
>
> And why would one want to avoid it anyway?
>
I’m not sure if it was meant as a prescription, but it seems to me that ‘use’ has the potential to turn upside down the way we should teach AppleScript.
If someone has experience of C or Obj-C, then ‘use’ will look very familiar (whereas ‘tell’ doesn’t), but for complete newbies to programming, the choice between ‘use’ and ‘tell’ throws up some interesting dilemmas. While ‘use’ is arguably syntactically simpler and more powerful, it obscures the nature of the targeting going on behind the scenes. It could be argued that this a short-term trade-off that will only make the language harder to grasp in the long run, so learners should first learn the ‘tell’ way and be introduced to ‘use’ later. On the other hand, if (and how strong that ‘if’ is was really the point of my question), ‘tell' is now almost always unnecessary, maybe we should just start teaching learners with ‘use’ from the get-go, in the same way that we learn C and Obj-C from the off with #include and #import directives.
I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I’m looking for a best approach. Not least because I’m a third of a way through an AppleScript beginners manuscript which I either need to rewrite half of my examples and change my approach or plunge ahead and tack ‘use’ on in an extra chapter somewhere along the line.
Phil
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