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But I am a programmer, and this code is going to be written and read by programmers. The experience from AppleScript shows IMO that a more English-like syntax d
by goto11 6y ago
But I am a programmer, and this code is going to be written and read by programmers. The experience from AppleScript shows IMO that a more English-like syntax does not actually make the language simpler to use, it just obscures the underlying semantics, making it harder to learn.
- klibertp 6y agoI don't disagree, but "simpler to use" and "easier to read" are almost orthogonal things :)
- goto11 6y agoI guess programmers can mean different things with "easy to read", but to me it means "easy to understand by reading". This in turn has two aspects: How complex the meaning is, and how clearly the syntax express this underlying meaning. The fallacy of AppleScript is to think that a syntax which looks familiar on the surface makes the semantics esier to understand. But since the underlying semantics are those of a programming language, not human-to-human communication, the syntax obscures the meaning. So to me "easier to read" and "simpler to use" both depends on the ergonomics of the programming model and the syntax used.