--- On Sat, 3/21/09, Hans-Christoph Steiner hans@eds.org wrote:
From: Hans-Christoph Steiner hans@eds.org Subject: Re: [PD] style guide idea: [send foo] versus [; foo( To: jancsika@yahoo.com Cc: "dmotd" dmotd@gmx.net, pd-list@iem.at Date: Saturday, March 21, 2009, 2:48 AM On Mar 20, 2009, at 5:51 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
--- On Fri, 3/20/09, Hans-Christoph Steiner
hans@eds.org wrote:
From: Hans-Christoph Steiner hans@eds.org Subject: Re: [PD] style guide idea: [send foo]
versus [; foo(
To: "dmotd" dmotd@gmx.net Cc: pd-list@iem.at Date: Friday, March 20, 2009, 5:25 PM I am not proposing to limit the use of dollar args
in
message boxes for dynamic sends, that is a very
useful
feature. The example you give here, though, is an
example of
a shortcut for typing, there is no other benefit
that I can
see.
And at the risk of sounding pedantic, I am going
to quote
one of my favorite ideas relating to code:
"Programs
should be written for people to read, and only
incidentally
for machines to execute". Typing shortcuts
like this
message box below almost never save time when you
look at
the whole picture. Code is read far more times
than it is
written, so really we should be optimizing for
reading
rather than writing.
Could you give an example that is more readable than
the message box below?
The key part is that [trigger] is the essential way in Pd to represent execution order. As Frank says: "use [trigger]s everywhere". Then by breaking out the messages into their own message boxes, you can clearly see what the messages that are being send separately from their destination.
Having lines of text execute in top-to-bottom may be more readable for
code like Java, C, etc., but Pd uses right-to-left to represent
execution order, hence trigger..hc
Pd also uses top-to-bottom to represent execution order. Maybe I've just gotten really used to msg-boxes spanning multiple lines-- they seem perfectly readable. But I can see how a single liner like [; pd-some-window clear( might confuse a student where using a msg-box -> [send] would not.
-Jonathan
-Jonathan
In Pd, [trigger] is the central mechanism for
specifying
execution order. Therefore, in the interest of
readability,
[trigger] should be used as much as possible.
Clearer documentation of the messages boxes would
also be a
great thing. But you almost anything without ever
using a
semi-colon in a message box, they are mostly used
as a
typing shortcut, and many people are confused by
them, so I
think we should really be limiting them to things
like
dynamic sends, since that is hard to do in other
ways.
.hc
On Mar 20, 2009, at 1:32 AM, dmotd wrote:
hmm.. generally this could be a good idea, but
message
sending is most useful
when initialising a number of receives ie:
[loadbang] | |; init-1 6 / |; init-2 symbol foo | |; init-3 -2 \
which is far more elegant than the the
trigger/send
replacement, especially
with more fields..
i think its important for students to
recognise that
this feature of messaging
has a role to play, rather than trying to veil
its
use. in my experience
people will tend to use [send foo] more often
when
they start pd, then begin
abbreviating to [s foo] before they appreciate
the msg
shorthand [; foo[. but
you are right it is a little confusing for new
users..
perhaps this just needs clearer documenting?
'what
does a semi-colon at the
start of a message mean?' in the FAQ?
dmotd
On Friday 20 March 2009 10:38:06
Hans-Christoph
Steiner wrote:
Here's something that I'd like to
propose
for the style guide, based
on my teaching experience:
- use [send foo] instead of [; foo( for
all sends
that aren't
dynamically set
A lot of people find the [; foo( syntax
confusing,
and since it is
commonly used, it often gets in the way of
newbies
understanding the
patch. While the [; foo( syntax is
definitely
useful for dynamic
sends, I don't think there is an
advantage to
using for the regular
sends. So for example:
[dsp 1(
[send pd]
instead of
|; / |pd dsp 1 \
This change highlights the dataflow aspect
of the
messages over the
text-style programming with syntax of the
message
box. At the very
least, I think that the help patches
should use
this style, and I have
started to use this style in my regular
programming and it feels quite
natural once you are used to it. I find
it easier
to read.
(as for [s foo] versus [send foo]
that's an
issue I want to avoid in
this discussion).
.hc
The arc of history bends towards justice.
Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
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Programs should be written for people to read, and
only
incidentally for machines to execute.
- from Structure and Interpretation of Computer
Programs
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