--1926193751-74017651-1235056923 424 Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="1926193751-74017651-1235056923=:9424" This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. --1926193751-74017651-1235056923 424 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Hi -- On Thu, 19 Feb 2009, Juan Zanos wrote: > > On 18 fñ×r. 09, at 18:43, Bill Kelly wrote: > >> >> From: "James Britt" <james.britt / gmail.com> >>> >>> I have my own preference, and have so far found arguments to the contrary >>> unsatisfying because they are usually based on previous use of parens in >>> other languages. (The most interesting suggestion I've heard is to use >>> the parens to indicate if the return value of the method is useful or not. >>> That is, whether a method is intended as a statement or an expression.) >>> I'm truly puzzled when people get their back up at the suggestion that >>> their style preference is based on bias obtained from previous exposure to >>> other language, conscious or not. I don't think too many people are >>> deliberately thinking, "I want to make this look like [C|Java|Perl|PHP]", >>> but surely there is *some* bias based on experience. >> >> I agree there is some bias based on experience, as I went through >> a phase about 18 years ago as a C programmer, deliberately >> memorizing the operator precedence table and taking small delight >> in being able to write expressions devoid of any parens except >> those strictly necessary to the parser. >> >> Note, also, that my first language was Forth, which I programmed >> in for seven years--initially as a hobbyist, then professionally-- >> before I learned C. >> >> Forth doesn't need parens for anything... ( they're comment delims. ) >> >> However, I'm not sure my Forth experience played a role in my >> temporary dalliance with extreme paren minimalism in C. At the >> time, I felt memorizing the operator precedence table and making >> use of that knowledge by minimizing use of parens was sort of a >> natural course to take for someone intent on mastering the >> language. >> >> Eventually one of my co-workers told me he had trouble reading >> my code. Initially my (private) reaction was, this guy isn't >> serious about his craft! He really ought to learn the language. >> >> Thankfully I got past that phase eventually. >> >> My current bias based on experience is that when reading code, >> my brain does frequently prefer more parens than are strictly >> necessary to the parser. > > One of the things that confuses this discussion is that some people are > talking about the use of parentheses with regard to operator precedence rules > and others are discussing far more arbitrary and questionable usages such as > in declaring and calling functions. I think it's telling that such a > seemingly minor complexity is cause for confusion. I don't think there's any confusion, just (rather trivially, in the overall scheme of things) different practices. David -- David A. Black / Ruby Power and Light, LLC Ruby/Rails consulting & training: http://www.rubypal.com Coming in 2009: The Well-Grounded Rubyist (http://manning.com/black2) Ruby Training Atlanta! April 1-3, http://www.entp.com/training/atlanta09 --1926193751-74017651-1235056923 424-- --1926193751-74017651-1235056923 424--