A nice bit of syntax

[Geoff Canyon]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 11:47 AM, Mark Schonewille <
m.schonewille at economy-x-talk.com> wrote:

> Hi Geoff,
>
> While this looks very nifty, it definitely isn't easier to program.
> LiveCode is much easier (IMHO). We should never be able to do this with
> LiveCode, simply because this isn't how xTalk languages function.
>

I didn't say it was easier.  It's more powerfully expressive. I'm not
advocating for AppleScript over xTalk, just admiring this syntax's
expressive capability.

xTalk shouldn't be static. It's not as english-like or expressive as it
could be. I still hold out hope (despite the disappearance of supporting
documentation) that the new definable syntax features will be able to do
more than just obscure object hybrids and translate system-level access,
and give *those who wish to* the ability to experiment with actually
extending xTalk, something that hasn't been done much in the last twenty
years.

One important difference is that AppleScript uses typed variables and even
> typed data and objects, while in an xTalk language everything is a string
> (except for arrays perhaps, which are constructs of strings). I consider
> this an advantage of xTalks.
>

Everything can be *treated* as a string. As far as I know:

   put 5 into x

Does not result in x being "5". And after that:

   add 3 to x

Does not require the engine to cast x from a string to a number so that it
can add 3 to it.


> If you really like this way of programming, you can create
> Cocoa-AppleScript applications with XCode, which I actually consider a very
> interesting way of programming, but I'm happy that I can use LiveCode next
> to AppleScript.
>>
>>
I have written less than 50 lines of AppleScript in the last fifteen years,
so apart from small projects I'm unlikely to go back.