On 2016-08-11 16:23, Tracy Harms wrote:
On Aug 11, 2016 10:09 AM, "Erling Hellenäs" <[email protected]>
wrote:
In most common programing
languages today names of functions
and variables are long. The program
and the environment is often complex.
Long names are needed to describe
complex operations in a complex
environment.
Names can be long in J. There is a cultural norm for using short names in
J, one that can be traced back to algebra and other writing practices that
pre-date computers, but it isn't a language feature. This entire topic
seems disconnected from both your alternative notation and your criticisms
of the J language.
Yes, I said:
"I can see no reason whatsoever to try to make the syntax extremely terse."
Raul said:
"There actually are reasons to use short names - they are faster to
type, they fit in tweets, and they are more manageable in a "let's try
another variation of this again" than the longer names. That said, you
can look at things like OpenGL as a counter example - here, we have
long names and lots of them. But here also we have problems with
people declaring frequently used chunks of it "deprecated" despite how
many frequently used things would break if people actually stopped
supporting the older stuff."
It seems like a deviation from the original subject, yes. I talk about words in
the meaning of J words like verbs, adverbs and conjunctions. Maybe Raul
misunderstood or its he's just generalizing. Or I misunderstood him.
If you want to use long names in J, go ahead and do so.
Yes, you can. I did and showed in the forums. I never saw anyone else do it.
Tracy Harms
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