4 ms·
a lot of people handwave the parenthesis and prefix notation as something you get used to, but it really is the thing that I think most people can't get a handl
by Illniyar 9y ago
a lot of people handwave the parenthesis and prefix notation as something you get used to, but it really is the thing that I think most people can't get a handle on.
There's a reason why DSPs and languages that look like a real languages are sought after - it makes conversion between business logic/requirements to code easier.
It makes maintenance easier - it's easy to make sure you made the right changes when the changes to your code looks like the changes to your business logic.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gimagon 9y agoWhat's DSP in this context?
- SomeHacker44 9y agoI'm guessing he meant DSLs.
- brlewis 9y agoOn the contrary, people not only get used to paren prefix notation, they quickly master it. Mastering operator precedence in your typical infix language is harder.
- pg314 9y agoAccording to RMS [1], even the secretaries in Bernie Greenberg's office were extending Emacs in Emacs Lisp. Nobody had told them what they were doing was programming and they were able to pick it up from a manual. The parentheses can't be that big an obstacle. [1] https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html
- dwc 9y agoI would restate that as people not pushing through past their initial uncomfortable feelings and preferences. Similarly, of all the people who have ever tried Prolog only a small fraction got past the "this is weird" stage. Or Forth. This unwillingness to learn something more than slightly different is limiting, and usually expresses itself in other ways as well. That does NOT mean that such people aren't good developers. You do run risks asking them to work outside their comfort zone, though.