Transcript and Dot Notation

[Dan Shafer]

My Gosh, Judy, you do get emotional about the strangest stuff. Lighten
up. This is a theoretical discussion about language syntax, not a
public policy decision that could result in the deaths of millions.

Yeesh.

I'll deal with your personal insult off-list because I don't believe
in responding to flames in public.

The reasons behind Lingo's death include the syntax issue but are far
from limited to it. There were dozens of stupid mistakes made with
that product, the least of which was probably the language change,
which, as I said earlier, was made at the request of a significant
number of users.

Other comments inline below.

On 2/25/06, Judy Perry <jperryl at ecs.fullerton.edu> wrote:

> Can you name the x-Talk language that's done what you are
> asking for, remained an x-Talk, and survived?  Does this mythic beast
> exist?  Why are you not using it already then?  Because it doesn't exist,
> I suspect.
>
Perhaps more to the point, can you name ANY surviving xTalk? Nope.
They're all pretty much dead except for Transcript. I could argue with
equal weight and perhaps a tad less vitriol that the *reason* they are
dead is becuas they didn't adapt to the world of object orientation.
You pick on the one thing about xTalks that you happen to like and
declare it the ultimate feature without which the language will die
but the issue is so much more complex than that.

> And why should you be able to get away with dismissing our concerns as
> mere "paranoia"?  Do you really mean this?  Does our money spend less well
> than yours?
>
As I said, I'll deal with this insult offlist.

> If, as you say, dropping support for verbose syntax is "hardly
> inevitable," can you show a single case in a major surviving x-talk
> language where this is the case?  What do you know that suggests history
> will not repeat itself?
>
If there were any surviving xTalks this question might even have been
interesting.

> Do you really want to be the father of the end of the last major surviving
> x-Talk?
>
Leave out the word "major." And anyone on this list who knows me --
which you clearly do not despite repeated efforts on my part to be
kind to you -- will laugh at the stupidity of that question. There are
probably not a lot of people on the planet who have done more to help
tools like this one survive than me and that's not bragging. I have
argued strongly against some language pollution that I thought would
harm Transcript. That we disagree about whether this particular change
would have a deleterioius effect is -- or should be -- a matter of
linguistic and academic interest and preference, not personal attack.

> Either Transcript is an x-Talk or it isn't.

Who says? What body standardizes the definition of "xTalk?" Hell,
'xTalk' isn't even a word. The "x" stands for "uinknown" or "generic."
> Without transparent
> implementation of OO, there simply is NOT a medium ground.

Perhaps you are a programming language compiler expert and you really
know this. I disagree and I suspect I have at least as much basis for
my view as you do for yours.

>Once you add
> dot.syntax, Transcript simply no longer is an x-Talk.  Ditto, squared, for
> once you then add VB syntax to make those folks happy.  And anything else
> that non-x-Talk people want for implementation into Transcript.
>
I do not advocate adding VB or other syntax. This discussion is about
how best to implement object orientation syntactically in a language
that has historically been not at all object oriented but only
object-like. If RR decides not to implement OO into Transcript, I
won't lose any sleep over it and I sure won't abandon it. As I said,
lighten up. This is (or at least started out as) a friendly discussion
about how to adpot objects in Transcript.

> Before you know it, what you will have is a mess of a "language" that
> almost no-one will be happy with,  no-one can learn, and almost nobody
> will be willing to pay to use.
>
> I know I won't.
>
So what you're saying is that if RR chooses to adopt an object
orientation and adopts a syntax you don't like, you'll stop using the
best tool on the market for building xplat apps? Wow, that's really
wise.

> Given your list of choices, I'm forced to select (a).  When you're done,
> will there be sufficient remaining existing and potential users to keep
> the company afloat?
>
Strange question. My question would be whether there are enough
existing and potential users NOW to keep the company afloat in a sea
of Ruby and Python and Java and JavaScript, all of which use object
orientation.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author
http://www.shafermedia.com
Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
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