DP6 more strict?

[Mark Wieder]

On 10/06/2015 12:07 AM, Mark Waddingham wrote:

> 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.

I believe Churchill said the same thing about Basic English <g>.

>
> 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.

Yeah. that would be me.
Thank you for fixing that one.
I do like having the compiler tell me when I've done something stupid.

>
> 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.

OK - playing Devil's Advocate here... I think one of the strengths of 
the xtalk language is that there may be many different paths to the 
solution of any given problem. I've learned a lot, and continue to do 
so, by seeing how other people approach issues differently from the way 
I would. So this artificial restriction cuts down on exploratory coding 
and places limits on the creative process of algorithm development.

-- 
  Mark Wieder
  ahsoftware at gmail.com