Re: Are parenthesis-free calls a Good?

[Miles Bader <miles.bader@...>]

"Brandon Van Every" <bvanevery@gmail.com> writes:
>> I heard once that some people prefer python because there is only one way how to
>> do it while other prefer perl because there are many ways how to do it. I think
>> I like lua because I can be very creative to find neat descriptive coding
>> styles without using too many special characters.
>
> CMake has only 1 exceedingly butt-simple way to do it:
> function(KEYWORD arg arg arg ... KEYWORD arg arg arg...)  I'm starting
> to realize that unless there's something to be gained from more
> flexible and elaborate constructs, this is an advantage for a build
> system.

Lua's function call syntax _isn't_ "elaborate," though; indeed, it's
arguably simpler than the above:  Lua only has positional parameters,
and you can omit the parens when there's a single string or table
argument.

That's it.

The thing about Lua that people like is that it does a good job of
leveraging a few very simple mechanisms to provide an unusually
flexible, powerful, and expressive language.

Of course some people will use those mechanisms to write bizarro
unreadable code using Lua -- but that's hardly something to be laid at
Lua's feet.  You can write fortran in any language after all...  :-)

-Miles

-- 
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it
has to be us.  -- Jerry Garcia