From: Greg Fodor <gfodor@...>
Date: 2007-05-25T09:25:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Introducing the "it" keyword

> This break in concentration can be a real killer in finding obscure bugs.
> My proposal also suffers from some of this problem but as it is
> "inherited" from regular expressions it may be easier to figure out.
>
I understand these concerns. The pipes are just sugar, it seems like
it
would be a small learning curve to me, but here are a few other ideas:

puts it if (x + y) * (it = (a - b)) < 10
puts it if (x + y) * ((a - b) as_it) < 10
puts it if (x + y) * (<it>(a - b)) < 10

It's not quite convincing that having an explicit relationship between
it => pipes, once learned, is more difficult to read/parse in your
head than scanning parentheses to figure out which are being used
as storage and which are not. (And if you said $8, which one is
actually
$8 and not $7! :))

When I first learned Ruby, reading:

return x if x < 5

Was really counterintuitive at first cause my brain was used to
thinking
"if I see 'return', it's going to return if I got to that line  in the
code." I had to unlearn that assumption, and read the full line
checking
for the trailing condition.

I see that mental leap as being many times more difficult to learn
than
associating an expression wrapped in pipes (or other sugar) with the
'it'
keyword.

Although, I'll grant that if there is a solution that functionally
meets
my list that uses idioms from another domain like regular expressions
it
might be a good contender. Maybe you can explain more about the flags
thing with an example to see how it feels vs. the pipes approach?