Hi Monks,
I'm not new to Perl, but I'm just new to PerlMonks.
And I start to love the Monastery. (<- yes of course I'm trying to get a lot of geek points for this).
Anyway... last week I have seen this, a bit old, but excellent posting: What is code readability?
from one of our PEPs (brian_d_foy)
By reading the 12 rules of Godgle I stopped on rule number 5:

Doesn't need syntax highlighting

Which in an extended meaning can be interpreted like:

Programs and programming languages have to be designed so, that they can be edited even by the most basic editors.

And I started to think exactly in the opposite direction...

Take for example Perl variable notations:

$ for a scalar, @ for an array, %for an hash, etc...

this idea of using symbols for variable notation (which is actually a genial idea) can't be brought further due to the limitations of ascii code.
But nowadays we are on the 21st century, and we program on specialized and powerful IDEs, so why to stick with ascii?
In detail I mean: imagine a programming language in which, in addition to normal ascii, also other symbols, like for example Σ,δ or σ can be used in the code. Moreover they are going to be interpreted by the compiler.

Here some example ideas:
1. @a=(2,3,4) is an array, if you say Σa you get ...9
2 ... and what is with Πa? Naturaly it is equal to 24.
3 imagine to replace $an_hash->{a_key} by $an_hash→{a_key}.
4. imagine to replace the return statement by ↵ (is not funny?)
5. imagine playing with text color and font and that this gives a special meaning to it. ( For example variable written in italic could mean : print those variables when running in debug modus.
and so on...

But finally whats the advantage of this?
I believe you could maybe make some aspect based programming or you could just only make code much more compact.


⇒ and already that brings a lot!

But now leave space to the replies. I hope to generate an interesting discussion...
Regs,
DACONTI

In reply to Code Readability. Break Rule Number 5? by DACONTI

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