On 2014-07-28 14:30, Ed Jaffe wrote:
> On 7/25/2014 8:17 AM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
>> On 2014-07-25, at 08:40, John Gilmore wrote:
>>
>>> We disagree, sharply. The abbreviation of long keyword/set element
>>> values using the notion of a case-independent disambiguating
>>> truncation is 1) convenient and 2) easy to teach in the sense that
>>> programmers and others come to understand it quickly.
>>>
>> And here, I take Fred's side.
>
> I LOVE abbreviations for interactive commands and their operands ... and HATE
> them in any kind of source code.
>
I think we agree to a point. What about in a pedagogic context?
If you were writing an example in a manual for a novice operator,
would you write:
CANCEL J(1234)
or:
C J(1234)
???
As I say, in VM/CMS I loathe a mentor's showing me an example of merely
one-letter abbreviations of a command and its keywords. I can learn
the shortcuts once I get digital fatigue.
-- gil
