Re: Dot Syntax docs missing?
Re: Dot Syntax docs missing?
- Subject: Re: Dot Syntax docs missing?
- From: Marcel Weiher <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:42:05 -0700
On Jul 19, 2008, at 18:34 , Ian Joyner wrote:
On 19/07/2008, at 11:36 PM, Michael Ash wrote:
The universe of programming languages extends far beyond this little
island of ALGOL-lookalikes. Objective-C messaging syntax is utterly
mundane compared to many common, useful syntaxes used in practical
(but different) languages every day. IMO you do yourself a disservice
if you don't branch out and try some different things once in a
while,
and remember that they're just programming languages, and syntax is
just syntax, nothing really all that important.
Except that syntax is the medium to convey meaning, thus to make it
easier for others to understand what a program is about. If it were
not so, we may as well have stuck to programming machine language in
1s and 0s. Thus syntax is important... or at least the manifestation
of that which is important.
Yep. For example, the Smalltalk syntax that Objective-C's 'bracket'
syntax is based on went through several iterations until they found
one that gave the most readable and predictable results.
I like a Steve Jobs quote from 1996: “Design is a funny word. Some
people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig
deeper, it’s really how it works.” Clean syntax reflects clean
functionality. The bracket syntax of Objective-C reflects the fact
that it was a preprocessor rather than compiler.
Well, the "square brackets" part. The base syntax inside the brackets
is simply Smalltalk keyword syntax, which simply would not have fit
into the C syntax without a very clear syntactic separator. At least
I don't see a way.
Marcel
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