From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 21931 invoked by alias); 2 Nov 2012 14:32:46 -0000 Received: (qmail 21920 invoked by uid 22791); 2 Nov 2012 14:32:45 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.6 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_05,KHOP_SPAMHAUS_DROP,KHOP_THREADED,RP_MATCHES_RCVD,SPF_HELO_PASS,TW_OJ X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from plane.gmane.org (HELO plane.gmane.org) (80.91.229.3) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:32:39 +0000 Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TUIIe-0005jQ-14 for cygwin@cygwin.com; Fri, 02 Nov 2012 15:32:44 +0100 Received: from rrcs-74-62-25-170.west.biz.rr.com ([74.62.25.170]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 02 Nov 2012 15:32:44 +0100 Received: from Andrew by rrcs-74-62-25-170.west.biz.rr.com with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 02 Nov 2012 15:32:44 +0100 To: cygwin@cygwin.com From: Andrew DeFaria Subject: Re: Command line arguments Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:32:00 -0000 Message-ID: References: <1351606847888-94081.post@n5.nabble.com> <20121031182143.M67652@ds.net> <20121031194051.GL67410@justpickone.org> <20121101174144.M43908@ds.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Thunderbird/17.0 In-Reply-To: X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com X-SW-Source: 2012-11/txt/msg00018.txt.bz2 On 11/02/2012 05:36 AM, Earnie Boyd wrote: > YMMV when it comes time for maintenance by someone other than the code creator. Consistency helps reduce cost and reducing company cost helps increase my pay check. I disagree. A [emphasis on] *foolish* consistency doesn't do anything to reduce cost. It's something programmers believe helps, then they spend a lot of time making things consistent for consistency's sake based upon this myth and thus adds cost not reduces it. Sprinkling syntactic sugar obscures the clarity of things, again, IMHO. Don't get me wrong - some forms of consistency are good and do help reduce cost because readability increases. But syntactic sugar is there for the computer - not the human. As for paycheck, I can assure you that mine is at an all time high and way above the average (like 3x). > Taking a few seconds to use {} to delimit all variables is priceless in the world of maintenance. No, IMHO it's wasteful to spend time doing this non-productive activity when it's the rare case that it is truly needed. > As a native English (American) speaker, I find myself more than once expanding contractions to make myself more clear about what I want to convey. And it probably ain't any clearer to anybody. If consistency in language was that much of a concern and you really wanted to make it such that you are absolutely clear then you should drop English ( http://defaria.com/Jokes/Plan4ImprovementOfEnglishSpelling.php and http://defaria.com/Jokes/CrazyLanguage.php) and pick up Lojban ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban). Of course then you'd be talking to yourself pretty much. > Contractions for contraction sake is not always a good thing. Nobody said it was. This was an *example* - intended to convey a higher and deeper meaning. Think about it instead of simply taking it literally. And with that I think we should end this, pretty much off topic discussion (take it to email if you'd like). -- Andrew DeFaria One time a cop pulled me over for running a stop sign. He said "Didn't you see the stop sign." I said "Yeah, but I don't believe everything I read." -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple