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> There's empirical evidence, loads of it, that this simply isn't true. Source? > unlike every other modern language, it allows identifier shadowing 1. All dynamically typed languages allow this, all/most REPLs even for statically typed languages allow this, even if regular code doesn't. 2. This is not syntax, at all, this is semantics of immutable value declaration+initialization. > but if dozens of identifiers are littered across a huge function it can be a challenge to keep track of which one is which Littering dozens of identifiers across huge functions is going to be a problem, no matter the syntax. It's a programmer's job to manage complexity by utilizing various kinds of techniques, including syntactic sugar (true), but also factoring the code into manageable chunks, using higher-level or better suited for the task at hand abstractions, and so on. Syntax on its own is, in my experience, the least impactful technique for managing complexity, at least before going into DSL-land (but then it's syntax+semantics). Another thing worth mentioning is that lots of general-purpose languages give you exactly the same constructs, just spelled differently. Simple examples: for (x : list) { ... }
foreach (x; list) { ... }
for x <- list do ... end
for x in list: ...
for my $x (@list) { ... }
for x := list { ... }
list each(x, ...)
list each: [ :x | ...]
(loop for x in list do ...)
(for [x list] ...)
All the above denote exactly the same construct, with very little variation in the number of tokens. Can you tell me if you think one of them is better than the others - and if so, why? |