the "my" keyword is wonky-wonky-wonky

Post #148,633 by deSitter 3/25/04 8:23:19 PM 3/25/04 8:24:51 PM Reply	the "my" keyword is wonky-wonky-wonky Things like that just ruin it for me. It's like Chairman Larry is everywhere. Programming does not need possessive pronouns. Something like "local" would have been just as good. But Larry the skin irritant has to be coy. ARGH. edit brain-hand fart -drl Edited by deSitter March 25, 2004, 08:24:51 PM EST Expand All History
Post #148,640 by ben_tilly 3/25/04 8:41:56 PM Reply	No, local would NOT be just as good Because local was already in use for something else. Changing what local did would have broken backwards compatibility in a large (and gratuitous) fashion. It is a fact of life in any large software project. Things move in unanticipated directions. The name that you want is already taken. You therefore need a different name. Cheers, Ben "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #148,651 by deSitter 3/25/04 9:17:51 PM 3/25/04 9:22:42 PM Reply	Not tied to the word itself ..it's just that "my" seems too touchy-feely. What about non-English speaking programmers? Programming survived for many years without self-reference. Another one is "die" - double-ugh. Why not "quit" or "stop" or "abort" or "end" or or or? These things are just Larryisms. Doing Perl means putting up with Larry peeing on your toilet seat all the time. These things seem trivial but there is a Zen-ness to programming - the form should be impersonal. It's an aesthetic, not a technical requirement. Same for the prefix operators. It would have been just as easy to use declarations and redeclarations. -drl Edited by deSitter March 25, 2004, 09:22:42 PM EST Expand All History
Post #148,706 by ben_tilly 3/26/04 1:06:28 AM Reply	Well, it's obviously not to your taste But I really don't understand why you're motivated to bitch so mightily about it. Regards, Ben "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #148,709 by deSitter 3/26/04 1:23:07 AM 3/26/04 1:24:06 AM Reply	Re: Well, it's obviously not to your taste I'll tell you why - because as an old APLer, I was thrilled with Perl in the beginning. A coworker asked me to evaluate it for a project he was working on - he wasn't a programmer as such. I was with it a few days when I started noticing how irritated I was when trying to read the code. I'd never really been emotionally irritated by something as abstract as a language, so I started looking into the history of it. A few of the ponderous smart-ass screeds of Wall gave me my answer. I would give anything if there were a profitable programming skill I could at least tolerate. I love programming, but all the beautiful idioms are dead in the water. That is why I bitch. -drl Edited by deSitter March 26, 2004, 01:24:06 AM EST Expand All History

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