total idiot question: +=, .=, etc...

[Reimer Behrends]

Alan Gauld (alan.gauld at gssec.bt.co.uk) wrote:
["self" prefix vs. readability.]
> I was amazed to discover how difficult it was to understand 
> the code because I couldn't identify which variables were 
> local to the function, which were instance variables and 
> which were global.

While I'd be the first to agree that C++ is not exactly the epitome of
language design, I would think that at least the local variables should
be easy to identify. The only real problem is to distinguish global
variables from instance variables. And this is made worse in C++ by
spreading all the information related to a class over more than one
file. It should be noted that other languages do not necessarily have
the same problem and that careful design can easily avoid it.

But I do not think that the most basic operations of an OO language
should be complicated by cumbersome syntax (this includes instance
variable access and local method calls). The language should encourage
use of these elements, not get in your way.

[...]

				Reimer Behrends