On Sun, Jul 29, 2018 at 12:49:13PM +1200, Greg Ewing wrote:
Abe Dillon wrote:
others countering that `person.name <http://person.name>` is not how periods are used in natural languages, so using other symbols in unintuitive ways is perfectly fine.
Dots have been used for attribute access in so many languages for so long that it has become the normal and expected syntax to use. ?. is much more recent. Maybe in another 30 years, if it has stood the test of time, it could be argued for on the basis of familiarity, but not now.
You're talking like the syntax is used only by a handful of experimental languages with a total user-base measured in the dozens. ?. is used by some of the most commonly used languages in the world, such as C++, Objective C and PHP, as well as up-and-coming "cool" languages getting lots of industry buzz, like Swift and Dart. Its certainly more familiar now than Python's slicing syntax was when Python first started. -- Steve