News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on This is CoffeeScript. Parent comment

Re:This is CoffeeScript by jrockway on Monday August 22, 2011 @03:45PM (#2913794)
What else would it mean?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:This is CoffeeScript by tlrobinson on Monday August 22, 2011 @03:54PM (#2913842)
I can understand what it means, it just takes slightly longer to comprehend without the parens providing a visual cue that it's a function call.

It only gets worse with nested function calls:

    item = new Item title: new Title "Awesome", id: 2
The syntax isn't ambiguous, but that doesn't mean it's easy for humans to parse.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:This is CoffeeScript by jessedhillon on Monday August 22, 2011 @05:28PM (#2914207)
In a language where there are two drastically differing ways to express the same idea, it could mean anything.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:This is CoffeeScript by jrockway on Monday August 22, 2011 @06:35PM (#2914434)
How are we having this conversation in English, then?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:This is CoffeeScript by jessedhillon on Tuesday August 23, 2011 @02:43AM (#2915627)
Well, it took about 8-12 years of practice for me to be able to do it correctly, and at least twice that to achieve my current proficiency. So when I have my choice of designed languages, I'd like one that tries to learn from the failings of the organic ones.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:This is CoffeeScript by rikthevik on Monday August 22, 2011 @11:13PM (#2915184)
It could easily mean that item is a 2-tuple.

item = (new Item title: "Awesome", id: 2)

[ Parent | on HN ]