Re: Lake

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 4:34 PM, Lorenzo Donati
<lorenzodonatibz@interfree.it> wrote:
> syntax c.program{'hello'} very nice and readable, but probably
> Lake.copyfile('a','b') would be better than simply copyfile('a','b').

Or file.copy - it would help to use namespaces more. And generally in
big programs I use them religiously, but I thought that a 'scripting'
environment would be nicer if things were global.  People should have
the choice, however.

> Some other point: would you consider renaming some functions for
> readability's sake? Or it is too late in the development process?
> I think that a slightly more verbose style could help in readability,
> especially those pople with little 'makefiles' or C/C++ experience.

I like your name suggestions, and they would make longer lakefiles
more readable.  The CC is very much a make-ism.  There could be short
and long aliases, of course.

>  a less  "system-programmer-centric/I-know-all-compiler-flags-by-heart" approach is
> needed,

Sometimes we write programs to keep all those silly rules in one place.

> 2.(worse, to me) too little focus on imperative facilities. I think humans
> are more naturally inclined to think imperatively.

Some problems led themselves to declarative solutions, some don't,
it's good to be able to choose the mode of solution. (It is also
partly a 'cognitive style' thing.)

It isn't at all too late in the development process. Here's a quote:

[[
Why the tab in column 1? Yacc was new, Lex was brand new. I hadn't
tried either, so I figured this would be a good excuse to learn. After
getting myself snarled up with my first stab at Lex, I just did
something simple with the pattern newline-tab. It worked, it stayed.
And then a few weeks later I had a user population of about a dozen,
most of them friends, and I didn't want to screw up my embedded base.
The rest, sadly, is history.
     - Stu Feldman, author of make
]]

(not that I'm putting myself in his company!)

steve d.