Re: Latest suggestion for 202x

[Egil H H <ehh.public@gmail.com>]

On Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 6:54:30 PM UTC+2, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> > An array can be easily swapped for a function without requiring major changes all over the place, as array indexing and function calls have the same syntax.
> 
> A(I) := 7;
> 
> Swap(A(I), A(J));
> 
> Sort_Subarray(A(1..10));
> 
> ...
> 
> Not really.
> 
> Arrays are *not* exchangeable with function calls.

Maybe not 100%, but that doesn't mean it's not a useful feature. I've certainly had use for it on more than one occasion. It also works the other way around; if your algorithm inside a function is measured to have sub-par performance, it's easy to exchange it for a pre-calculated lookup-table.

> Therefore, the fact that they have similar syntax is more a source for confusion than any genuine advantage. 

I don't find it confusing. Having a similar syntax just makes everything come together in a very nice fashion that feels familiar and aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, i.e. readable.

> Also, the bracketing used is different from any other popular programming language, which further adds to confusion. 

Well, we don't want to repeat the mistakes of others :p


> Also, it cannot be easily found by text-based tools without complete semantic capability (grep, etc.).

There's often more than one array in my codebase... Even within one file there can be both definition and usage of more than one array. So grep-ing for square brackets can give hundreds of false positives. I would much rather just grep for the type name of the actual array I'm interested in.


-- 
~egilhh