Novel Thoughts on Scripting and Languages

[Neil Hodgson]

James Huang:

> For the lack of words, try this: scroll back to your response of
> "do_sgml()" to my "do .. as sgml" example, move back 3 feet, and see
> if you can understand what my code does and what yours does. :)

   Of course my answer is the inverse of yours. You prefer syntax that
avoids punctuation. I did actually find it hard to work out what some of
your examples did. In the first example on the XML section of the site, my
initial interpretation was that it was some form of tree transformation -
choosing '.' as a print command is unusual even if not novel.

> I hate visual polutions, especially in code. I
> love simplicity, extremely. Count this as part of the vision.

   But you are not really creating simplicity, just moving it around the
system. Where you see an embedded domain-specific syntax with a backup use
of an API, Andrew (and I) see a non-scalable solution. You may start with
simple quoted pieces of an embedded language where everything is constant.
Then you get to insert values with '(*var*)' then the domain syntax runs out
and you have to move to an API which places a jump in the otherwise smooth
slope of development.

   Neil