Method Underscores? (and a 'solution')

Alex Martelli aleaxit at yahoo.com
Fri Oct 22 02:56:29 EDT 2004


Jeremy Bowers <jerf at jerf.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 00:25:28 +0200, Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> > Jeremy Bowers <jerf at jerf.org> wrote:
> > 
> >> But what mystical language exists that uses less punctuation than Python?
> > 
> > Applescript, maybe.  'tell foo of bar to tweak zippo' where python would
> > have bar.foo.tweak(zippo), looks like.  (I'm not enthusiastic about the
> > idea, just pointing it out!-).
> 
> Point. Maybe Cobol on the same theory? I don't know, I've never used
> either.

Roughly, I guess.  But a typical Applescript might be:

tell application "Microsoft Word"
   open "MyWordFile"
   set selection to paragraph 1
   data size of selection as string
end tell

while a typical Cobol would start

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID.  My-Program.
AUTHOR.  Some Body.

DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01  Num1           PIC 9  VALUE ZEROS.

etc, etc; more full-stops, typically.

 
> I guess if you're so stuck on the double-underscore-is-too-much-
> punctuation idea, you *deserve* to try to do all your programming in a
> combo of COBOL and Applescript :-)
> 
> I'm thinking I'll stick with Python.

Me, too.  But I understand how the "antiperl" (lrep?-) nearly
punctuation free style of Applescript may be tempting -- if Applescript
were cross-platform, it might perhaps make an even better beginners'
language than Python (and I think that of few languages).  It doesn't
scale up as well as Python, though, it appears to me.


Alex



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