compileIt for revolution?

[Geoff Canyon]

On Jun 23, 2005, at 10:09 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> Verbosity is a virtue in my mind. Not only does it make code more  
> readable and therefore maintainable, but I can't tell you how many  
> times I've just sort of guessed at what command or property change  
> might have some desired effect only to have it behave exactly as  
> predicted. Only with xTalk and Python have I had that kind of  
> experience. And I love it!
>

I don't think the two properties you're talking about, clarity and  
intuit-ability, have anything to do with verbosity. All three are  
effects related to the english-like nature of Transcript. Anyone who  
understands English and the concept of variables understands what  
"put 3 into x" means.

I think the verbosity claim is generally a red herring. Not that  
you're making that claim, Dan, you just helped me up onto the soap  
box ;-) The go-to (no pun intended) comparison is "put 3 into x" vs.  
"x:=3" That comparison is dramatic but misleading. "repeat 20" is no  
more verbose than the equivalent in most other languages. "if" is  
still "if" There are even counter-examples, such as various languages  
that surround conditional groups with braces or other syntactic  
sugar. Further, the built-in command set, including things like chunk  
expressions and url-based filesystem access, lead to there being less  
overall code in Transcript compared to other options. I have yet to  
see a systematic comparison of the length of Transcript vs. that of  
other languages.

The clarity of Transcript comes simply from good naming conventions  
for commands and functions. The intuit-ability is much the same. If  
good naming happens to lead to slightly longer names, that's not a  
problem for me.

regards,

Geoff