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I came to a similar conclusion about how some people strive to reduce what they call "visual noise" on their programming languages, by removing things like semi
by MrPatan 3y ago
I came to a similar conclusion about how some people strive to reduce what they call "visual noise" on their programming languages, by removing things like semicolons, parentheses, curly braces, etc. and others, like myself, who like the punctuation.
I think I read code visually. I understand its literal 2D-visual shape first, and use punctuation as visual markers to help me along. Then I backfill the gaps in the structure with the actual "content" of the code.
For the longest time I was baffled by the other camp's attempts to get rid of punctuation. What are they thinking? I now believe what they're thinking is of code as linear text. If you read the code linearly first, as text, and build the structure in your head as you go then yeah, all; of(that) seems {kinda} pointless && annoying.
Now guess which camp is more likely to write blog posts about how theirs is the One True Way? Ah, the humanity.
- hota_mazi 3y agoI've actually gone one step further and I'm pretty sure I can adapt to anything now. I coded in Java for 20+ years and then switched to Kotlin. Semicolons were gone, it was a breath of fresh air. And then I learned Rust and I faced what I thought were two absolutely insurmountable obstacles: semicolons AND snake_case. I considered Rust ugly for these reasons and really dragged my feet. But I was curious about the language, so I perservered. One week later, I wasn't noticing any of these any more. I still do think that semicolons are a manifestation of a language developer who favors their time over mine, but it's become more of a pet peeve than a deal breaker. The human mind is wonderfully flexible.
- pjc50 3y agoIf I ever do my "pet crank opinions" programming language, it will use "." as the statement terminator as it is in English. And COBOL.