5 ms·

Is it worse than shorting "integer" to "int" or "begin scope" to "{"?

by sparky 15y ago

Arelius 15y ago
I think your first point is valid, but Punctuation has other advantages, the symmetry between {} and the distinctness of the symbols (Taller than most, for instance) provide other advantages for the later.
- willvarfar 15y ago
  This irks me to bits. You need to be an ambidextrous octopus to get a { out of my (non-US) keyboard.
  - Arelius 15y ago
    The problem is many languages are designed on US keyboards. And even engineers who are otherwise mindful of unicode and other internationalization problems, may trivially forget what keys may not be on other keyboards. I suppose your best bet may be to muck a bit with the key bindings of your particular text editor. IMO, I already swap some keys around to make () and {} more usable.
    - willvarfar 15y ago
      continuing this tangent, I'm not a fan of closing blocks either; I much prefer indentation http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18319031919/programming-language-readability http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18319031919/progr...
      - Arelius 15y ago
        Yeah, Significant whitespace is why I won't code in Python anymore. Also, the linked article's comparison of Haskell and Python on readability is an awfully poor comparison, Haskell has notoriously terse syntax, In comparison to Python, which is nearly designed with the sole purpose of having good looking syntax.
        willvarfar 15y ago
        but that was the very point of comparing Python and Haskell. FWIW the Haskell crowd were super-defensive and claimed that Haskell is super-readable (by them). Now in that article I talk about 'curly bracket' languages in general, meaning those that use symbols (words) to denote blocks rather than indent. And I don't like reading them because of that.
    - cpeterso 15y ago
      I wonder which programming language's syntax requires the least shifting? On my (en-US) keyboard, the following punctuation does not require shifting: `-=[]\;',./
    - troels 15y ago
      Curiously though, many popular languages are created by non-English natives.

Is it worse than shorting "integer" to "int" or "begin scope" to "{"?

by sparky 15y ago

Is it worse than shorting "integer" to "int" or "begin scope" to "{"?

I think your first point is valid, but Punctuation has other advantages, the symmetry between {} and the distinctness of the symbols (Taller than most, for instance) provide other advantages for the later.

willvarfar 15y ago
This irks me to bits. You need to be an ambidextrous octopus to get a { out of my (non-US) keyboard.
- Arelius 15y ago
  The problem is many languages are designed on US keyboards. And even engineers who are otherwise mindful of unicode and other internationalization problems, may trivially forget what keys may not be on other keyboards. I suppose your best bet may be to muck a bit with the key bindings of your particular text editor. IMO, I already swap some keys around to make () and {} more usable.
  - willvarfar 15y ago
    continuing this tangent, I'm not a fan of closing blocks either; I much prefer indentation http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18319031919/programming-language-readability http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18319031919/progr...
    - Arelius 15y ago
      Yeah, Significant whitespace is why I won't code in Python anymore. Also, the linked article's comparison of Haskell and Python on readability is an awfully poor comparison, Haskell has notoriously terse syntax, In comparison to Python, which is nearly designed with the sole purpose of having good looking syntax.
      - willvarfar 15y ago
        but that was the very point of comparing Python and Haskell. FWIW the Haskell crowd were super-defensive and claimed that Haskell is super-readable (by them). Now in that article I talk about 'curly bracket' languages in general, meaning those that use symbols (words) to denote blocks rather than indent. And I don't like reading them because of that.
  - cpeterso 15y ago
    I wonder which programming language's syntax requires the least shifting? On my (en-US) keyboard, the following punctuation does not require shifting: `-=[]\;',./
  - troels 15y ago
    Curiously though, many popular languages are created by non-English natives.