Novel Thoughts on Scripting and Languages

[James Huang]

"Neil Hodgson" <nhodgson at bigpond.net.au> wrote in message news:<4ZdT9.17928$oS1.72693 at news-server.bigpond.net.au>...
> 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

Avoid punctuation? Multiple statements for a single task? If so that's
right. Especially if you can avoid 10 or 20 punctuations for common
areas.

> 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.

Many people have said that. My bad that I was too laze to use
'println'. Thanks for pointing that out. For XML, it could also be
caused by the hint of a DOM tree.

> 
> > 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

These conveniences makes it great for scripting (pls refer to my
definition of this term in 'JH-Grant Edwards-JH-Dave Brueck-JH') and I
recommend NOT to use JudoScript for building large software (but use
Java) hence scalability is not an issue.

> 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.

Compromise, what else?

> 
>    Neil