[Gambas-user] Suggestions 4 new keywords

[Doriano Blengino]

Fabián Flores Vadell ha scritto:
>
>> Your proposal resembles the syntax of pascal - I like pascal, and use it
>> a lot; but the biggest annoyance of pascal is this double declaration in
>> interface and implementation: very clean and very logical - for a
>> compiler from 1970.
>>     
>
> Oh! Lisp come from fifties, but many current languages do not reach
> their ankles :-)  (I'm not referring to Gambas)
>   
I am not saying that because a language is old, it's bad. In fact, I 
still think that pascal is hard to beat, if you embrace its philosophy. 
And about lisp... wonderful! Especially for teaching. But how many 
applications you find, written in lisp, nowadays?

>> I don't think that substituting PRIVATE and PUBLIC
>> with INTERFACE and IMPLEMENTATION would save typing, may be sometimes...
>>     
>
> You forgot argue about your opinion. But, please, pay attention when
> you read: I'm saying about an << alternative >> syntax.
>   
Ok, I will argue about it. From what I understand, the paradigm you 
describe looks similar to pascal (and C++): an interface section 
declares all the public symbols, which will be detailed (implemented) 
later. So every method declaration must be written twice, in interface 
and in implementation. And this alone is a lot of typing. When the 
number of lines between interface and implementation grows to several 
screens, you start to navigate up and down in the source. A good 
editor/IDE can help, but the problem remains: why we have to write the 
same things twice? Perhaps because a compiler born in the '70 could not 
read the same source twice, especially if that source was punched on 
cards... it is no surprise that a pascal compiler, on modern computers, 
is so fast: the program is written in a way totally good for the compiler!

So, I prefer the gambas way - you write things once, exactly where you 
want, and the compiler does the rest.

You say that your proposal is only an <<alternative>>. Ok. Even an 
alternative, an option, must respond to good criteria. I am not saying 
that your proposal is wrong - simply I think that probably it is not 
what a gambas user expects. To let you know, I am probably the most 
critic user of gambas - I am not afraid to point out its weaknesses. But 
this time, I think that gambas is right.

>> The validation mechanism seems pretty, but does not add anything to the
>> more general form of getter/setter. Just more readable by a human (which
>> is not too little, anyway).
>>     
>
> Yes. Nothing must be change in background. Just is about readability,
> and syntax  closer to OOP
>
>   
>> May be that there can be a midway idea: to have PUBLIC and PRIVATE
>> inherited from the last declaration. You specify PUBLIC at the
>> beginning, and then write variables and methods. Then you specify
>> PRIVATE, and then write all the private part of the class. This way, you
>> get closer to your proposal, still having the possibility to mix public
>> and private declarations.
>>     
>
> I proposed exactly that, time ago to Benoît. But, because I'm
> referring to a alternative syntax closer to OOP, I think that
> INTERFACE and IMPLEMENTATION keywords are more accurated. That they
> exist in Pascal from nineties is just anecdotal, and not detract
> merits to them.
>
> A very important advantage, was not emphasized enough: keywords closer
> to OOP help very much to teaching an OOP language, because them are
> closely related to the OOP concepts.
>   
Uhm... I don't understand why interface and implementation should be 
related in any way to OOP. Don't forget that the gambas way of having 
form=class=module/unit/library/whatever=file is a gambas specific 
simplification. More mature languages can declare more than one class in 
a file, or use more files to declare a single class. Interface and 
implementation existed before OOP was invented, and OOP can live without 
them; these two keywords are simply a way to group declarations - be 
them OOP declarations or not.

I want to say just another thing. It seems that you are proposing 
changes to gambas without having tried it enough. The same happened to 
me - it is normal: you start to use something new, and many things are 
different from what you expect or desire. A bit (or a lot) of adaptation 
is needed - computers are not so powerful to adapt themselves to human 
beings. After some time, and two or three non-trivial applications 
written in gambas, you will change your mind - you will begin to 
appreciate it more than now. If not, you will then, and only then, 
entitled to criticize. I am not saying that gambas is perfect: I feel 
that you and me share many thoughts about programming, but I repeat: 
give gambas some time.

Regards,
Doriano