1. Re: Features
Hi guys,
Let's have a riot! Or at least a rowdy heretic party while the boss is
away: what do you hate most in Euphoria?
When he gets back from his cruise, well rested, he might even find it
mildly amusing, if not exactly useful...
I mean existing obnoxious features, not the missing things that you
want to add.
My list is long, but I am also well known as a moaner. My complaints
range from really petty ones to real monsters. Here we go:
case sensitivity: I prefer to use the case for my own purposes. I know
this is not going to be terribly popular, and I suppose it also
saves a millisecond or two while parsing...
unnecessarily long words and redundant brackets: sometimes I feel
'procedure' must be the longest word in the English dictionary...
Why to use integer, constant, sequence, procedure when everybody
else is using int, const, list and proc or def? And, please, do
not tell me I need a typing course or a better editor!
constants: WHY?!!! Capitalize the name of the variable, if you cannot
resist the urge, but why the extra noise?
comma separator: I do not know why I find it so irritating, so
hideous, so BASIC like. White space would do the same job.
curly brackets: my pet hate. Probably the most frequent element in
Euphoria code. And it requires a shift key! And I still can't do
it by hand. The curly and square brackets must be switched at
midnight on New Year's Eve! And do not wait for the year 2000!
types, type checking: this is a biggy, almost certainly the most
useless feature of Euphoria - all reasons proffered for its
existence are at best metaphysical.
variable declaration: even BASICs have automatic variable declaration.
If you accept my previous point about a total uselessness of types,
and I expect the more orthodox types among you (sorry about the
pun), especially some youngsters, might have a real problem with
it, then it follows we should have just one type: objects. And
they would be automatically declared at, and their names recognized
as valid from the point of the first assignment. Note, we would
still need the sequence(), atom() and integer() functions!
This is roughly all I can think of right now with a throbbing headache
- the second bout of flu this winter, and I even had a flu shot at the
beginning of the season.
I hope you also noticed I have not even mentioned exw - perhaps
because I can't care less about it.
Please, no foul smelling articles in the mail. jiri
