[erlang-questions] Re: erlang improvement - objective c (or smalltalk) syntax

[Tony Arcieri]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Steve Davis
<steven.charles.davis@REDACTED>wrote:

> Joe,
>
> Nice idea, but...
>
> On Jun 4, 4:10 am, Joe Armstrong <erl...@REDACTED> wrote:
> >             + forces use of meaningful tag names in arguments
> >             + don't have to remember argument order
> >             + variable names in the body of a function become shorter
>
> I don't believe 1 or 2, and in large functions 3 may still be a
> liability.
>

In regard to 2 (don't have to remember argument order) argument ordering is
pretty inconsistent throughout the standard library.  I've eventually
memorized it for certain modules (e.g. lists) but most of the time I am
constantly checking the documentation for the proper argument order, which
is annoying and interrupts the flow of programming.  This is something I
almost never do in a language like Ruby but did fairly regularly in a
language like C.

Are you saying you don't have trouble remembering the argument order across
modules, or are you saying you don't mind constantly checking the
documentation?

-- 
Tony Arcieri
medioh.com