[Gambas-user] Railroad Diagrams

[bb]

On Thu, 2021-07-01 at 15:01 -0500, John Dovey wrote:
> Does anyone think this would be a worthwhile exercise to create these
> for Gambas?
> ----[ http://gambaswiki.org/wiki/doc/netiquette ]----

For Gambas itself, I doubt it. But

Where they could be useful to a developer is when he/she is trying to
define the syntax for their own code. By way of an example, I am
currently trying to define a new interface class for our database
front-end library. 
Our "Load" method front-ends gb.db.Find(la, la, la) with a flexible
method that would allow Finds
* on the primary key
* on a partial key
* on non-pkey criteria
* and negated criteria
Working out the syntax I want, even before "I need", is difficult to
describe textually. Maybe a visual syntax like these railroad diagrams
may be useful.

Some things to note about this type of syntax modelling is that 
1. It is incredibly important to recognize that "the model is not
reality".
2. To justify its use it must be very swift and unintrusive into the
thought process.
3. Sometimes the model can be more confusing than the reality.
4. (Railroad diagrams were useful(?) for procedural languages. I don't
know whether they are fully capable of handling object oriented
languages.)

That's what I thinks.
bruce