DP6 more strict?

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2015-10-05 09:58, jameshale wrote:
> Except the alternate syntax can no longer be handled.

The alternate syntaxes in many cases don't necessarily do what you 
think.

In your case:

repeat with x = 1 to 5

repeat for x = 1 to 5

Is certainly quit clear - one can immediately see what they should do 
quite unambiguously.

My personal feeling (having observed people's interaction with the 
language for a long time) is that variant forms of syntax which do the 
same thing actually make things harder to learn and understand - it 
makes the dictionary larger and increases the vocabulary for no real 
benefit.

Other forms which are no longer allowed are things like:

   repeat with x = 1 to 5 with messages

This has no function at all - the 'with messages' is ignored - indeed I 
think a couple of people have found bugs in their scripts as a result.

Whilst strictness might reduce 'personal expression' to some extent, I 
do think it helps the learning and remembering process. It means 
everyone uses the same forms to do the same things - making reading each 
others code, and helping each other out easier.

> Whatever side of the fence one eventually chooses the docs need to 
> match,
> and if this stricter mode is kept some flag about it in both the docs 
> and
> the release notes is warranted.

I will happily hold my hands up and say that this was an element of 
social engineering on my part.

For a long time I've stopped any changes which make syntax stricter from 
being attended to - precisely because of the concern of breaking 
scripts. However, this position has always been based on abstract 
argument rather than direct data thus this time round I decided to let 
this change go through, without any sort of fanfare - just to see if it 
truly was a problem.

If the change is kept then we will make sure it is noted much more 
clearly in a future build.

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps