Whoops - sorry for the totally off-topic post! Damn I keep mixing up
geronimo & groovy....
On 28 Nov 2003, at 15:38, James Strachan wrote:
Hi Olivier
On 28 Nov 2003, at 15:29, Olivier Lefevre wrote:
So, here we go again, after a false start ;-)
:)
Incidentally I've CC'd the groovy-dev mail list in case anyone else
fancies a syntax rant too :)
First, I think this is a very interesting project: I agree 100% that
the
problem with jython is that it comes with too much unneeded python
baggage.
I like the Groovy semantics but I have some issues with the syntax.
First, I really HATE this bracket stuff.
<flame>
In languages with brackets and using the "standard" (i.e., brain-
dead) formatting style, one always ends up with insanities like:
foo = swing.frame(title:’Cheese’) {
panel {
borderLayout {
center {
table(model:new MySpecialTableModel(someParam))
}
south {
panel {
button(text:”Eat", actionListener:{ bar.eatCheese() })
button(text:"Cancel", actionListener:{ bar.close() })
}
}
}
}
}
Looking at this code what do you see? Nothing but brackets. Even
though they are totally superfluous!! Why do even seemingly
intelligent people go for this? This is so offensive. On the one
hand you pass yourself as a hacker who breathes code and whose
idea of fun is to design new languages; on the other you write
the above, which basically says: hey, I don't care if my coding
style emphasizes what is least important, is just plain ugly and,
in short, is dumb shit: it's just code, folks! That may be the
right attitude for a code monkey but not for a language designer!
Getting rid of brackets would have the great advantage of making
this discussion pointless.
</flame>
Care to give an alternative suggestion? The above is way cleaner than
XML (which has close tags as well as open tags and all those pointy
brackets). Nested markup typically needs some way to mention inner &
outer blocks. Take any XML markup & try do it without some kind of
token to tell the parser what the tree looks like; its quite hard
without a token. We're using {} for consistency with closures & Java
blocks etc.
FWIW any good IDE should be able to auto-format & highlight missing {
or } so it should be real easy to edit.
Though I suspect you maybe are thinking about python style
indentation? Typically that just saves typing 1 char. I'm not yet
convinced by python indentation... Saving 1 char press per block seems
a small price to pay to avoid tabs / spaces bugs.
OTOH, your use of semi-colons seems inconsistent. Why
collection.each { i | print(i); };
but
[1, 2, 3].map { x | return x * x }
in which _both_ semicolons are absent?
Because semicolons are optional. And some of the documentation /
sample code is old & was written when they were mandatory :)
As with brackets, I think
semicolons would be best dispensed with, although they are not
nearly as obnoxious.
Agreed - they've gone. (Or at least are optional).
So you can use them if you need to.
[1, 2, 3].each { x = it * 10; y = it * 100; foo.bar(x, y) }
And while we are on this topic (but this is probably due to my lack
of familiarity with continuations, although I use CPS-style code in
Java a lot), how can print(i) in
list.each{ i | print(i); };
be said to "maintain state across invocations"?
I'm not sure what that means :)
FWIW how do you do CPS-style coding in Java? Just wondered what
approach / tool you use for this? (CPS == Continuation Passing Style
right?)
James
-------
http://radio.weblogs.com/0112098/
James
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http://radio.weblogs.com/0112098/
