From: Marc Heiler <shevegen@...>
Date: 2008-06-17T19:52:03+09:00
Subject: Re: print(true and true) #=> the parenthesis issue

Dear Tom Cloyd,

"What happened to the principal of least surprise? Yikes.

Keep it simple, when at all possible."

Your suggestive (and false) remarks are irritating at best. There is 
only one principle of least surprise, if ever, and this is by the one 
who designs the language. There is no GENERAL CONSENSUS applicable to a 
"principle of least surprise" because different expectations, patterns, 
experience will yield to different perceptions of any given situation.

The KISS strategy is only one more strategy in a pool of different 
strategies.

I have seen it used in the game Wesnoth and what this basically means it 
that they slavishly reject features that "would make the game too 
complicated".
To the extreme that, when one suggests simplification to a game 
interface, a similar reasoning is used to reject it ("would make the 
code too complicated")

Whether this is intentional or not, it is their decision, but it would 
not be the ONLY available strategy to create/solve something.

I'd rather not stick to ANYONE's "keep it simple" mantra, definitely not 
when multiple people jump on it and pick it up to shout something is a 
bug when it is not what they expect.

If anyone wants to know my principle of leat surprise, then I'd never 
have a parser that makes a difference between && and "and" or similar. 
But I am no language designer.
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