Re: Lightweight function syntax (again) Re: [ANN] Lua 5.2.0 (alpha-rc2) now available

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 10:55 AM, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> Language design is not a contest in piling up the largest heap of
> elegant splinters.

Yes, because the elegance of the parts does not contribute to the
elegance of the heap.

But if the splinter fits some gap ...

The argument against redundancy can be made against existing Lua
syntactical sugar. Say there was no colon method call, and people
would be complaining about the awkwardness of doing object-oriented
programming. Then would the reply be like this?

"Look, Lua isn't an object-oriented language. Just write

local obj = someFun()
obj.method(obj,args)

and then it's totally clear what's happening"

steve d.

PS. I don't like the @[...] notation personally - still a |x| x+1 or a
\x(x+1) fan.