"Joseph F. Ryan" wrote:
> Perhaps in the grand scheme of things; however, anyone that is
> redesigning a system should not be ignorant of how the old system
> worked (even in the slightest degree), in order to know of what to
> keep and what to throw away.
Oy. One more time. My objection is this: I said C<map {...} @a> and
friends are special compared to normal subroutine syntax, because there
isn't a comma after the {...}. It was then stated that C<map> itself is
not special, because the '&' in the prototype allows the special case to
exist not only in "map", but in anything else prototyped in the same
way. True.
My error, therefore, was to not properly define what I meant by "normal
subroutine syntax", because I thought it was clear from the context what
"normal" meant... it meant "compared to having a comma there". But it
wasn't clear.
This, however, is a Computer Science discussion. Computer Science is
one of those fields populated almost exclusively by people who consider
any statement devoid of at least three explanatory footnotes to be an
act of aggression, and who measure their own genius in large part by
their practiced lack of ability to infer meaning from any string of
words not emanating from their own head.
Thus, a possible response like "I don't agree with your use of the word
'special' to describe this case, because these other cases are
identically 'special' too" is transformed without any apparent irony to
"since you did not use the precise wording I myself would have used in
your two-sentence explanation, that provides conclusive evidence that
you therefore don't know Perl5."
Yes, in hindsight, I should have responded "I know *why* the specialness
exists, you thundering blowhards, I'm just noting that it *is* special
compared to how *most* subroutine argument lists look. Quit assuming
that every last syntactic nuance will tunnel untouched to Perl6 by the
grace of your own unassailable wisdom, and tell me *why* this particular
one should." [1] Those sorts of communications can sometimes cross the
semantic barrier.
Yes, perhaps we should all have our mail proofread by a peer jury before
we post, thus attempting universal semantic clarity... or perhaps we can
all just practice those human social skills that some of us might have
seen on television or in the movies, and Get Over Ourselves. [2]
(Note that Damian was the *only* person who, at any point in the
discussion, was able to identify the notion that not having the comma
there was "different" from having the comma there, and was able to
respond with an argument more structured than "because Perl5 does it."
_This_ is why his ideas get implemented. Duh.) [3]
> >Any programmer who doesn't know that they are ignorant are almost
> >certainly instead arrogant.
>
> Ignorant of what? Surely we shouldn't assume that we're all ignorant
> of Perl?
What I'm trying to avoid is the apparent need for programmers to degrade
every conversation into an I'm-smarter-than-you semantic duel. In the
entire history of the Perl6 process, there has been noone here to emerge
as God's Perfect Gift to Language Design -- I think the design has been
improved repeatedly by the collective thoughts of the group. But
nobody, individually, has a very good batting average, so I think nobody
is in a position to throw stones.
MikeL [4]
[1] OK, that's definitely not civil. Which is why I didn't originally
say it.
[2] Er, that's not great either, but probably in the range of acceptable.
[3] Note to self -- remove the 'Duh', and it will be fine.
[4] And yes, the irony of needing N paragraphs to try to convince
programmers of such a profoundly simple concept is not lost on me. Nor
is the fact that it will inevitably fail...
