On 01/24/13 19:05, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: > On 1/24/13 9:47 AM, Artur Skawina wrote: >> Having ()-less function calls is just insane; if it isn't obvious to you why, >> you just haven't read enough code that (ab)uses them. > > You see, this is the kind of argument that I find very damaging to the > conversation. It lacks any shred of material evidence, evokes emotion, > manipulates the reader's opinion (framing them into incompetent/inexperienced > if they disagree), and implies an appeal to authority. Please don't do that > anymore.
You're more than welcome to produce counterevidence, or ignore the arguments, for whatever reasons. Ad hominems won't work, not only because I don't take this personally, but because I'm probably the person most willing/likely to discuss any relevant issues around here (I wish there was more like us (ie me)). Trying to make arguments you don't like go away and silencing the messenger is your MO. Please don't do that anymore. Not because I ask you to, but because it does harm the language, and the "community". Trying to at least understand the other point of view and reflecting a bit can be very enlightening. Who knows, you might even learn something new. Having said that, I'll elaborate on the sentence you quoted above. See for example Timon's code [1] here: http://dpaste.dzfl.pl/baa538af . Spot the recursion in the tree-walker. This is an example of the kind of abuse of parens-less calls that an unsuspecting programmer shouldn't have to deal with. Sure, in this case it's simple enough, but in more complex scenarios, where the 'inorder' field/method/ufcs definition is not readily available, it would be extremely misleading. It's not reasonable to expect everyone reading the code to check every single object field access, just in case the previous coder decided that the source looked "cuter" w/o the '()'. artur [1] This isn't meant to single out Timon in any way; it's just a recent public code example I happened to remember. I would consider Timon one of the most helpful and knowledgeable people here - thanks for all the help and arguments, even the ones where we disagree, btw.
