One of the weirdest things about using a lot of programming languages is when you're using a language you don't use so often, and you're not sure how a thing should be done, so you just sorta go "I'm going to invent a syntax that makes sense to me" and...
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One of the weirdest things about using a lot of programming languages is when you're using a language you don't use so often, and you're not sure how a thing should be done, so you just sorta go "I'm going to invent a syntax that makes sense to me" and you type it and it compiles and works
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@mcc see, this works because that’s how the syntax for features gets chosen in the first place. once you have a sense of the aesthetic, you’re just doing the same thing as the original designer, who invented a syntax who made sense to them!
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@jrose Yeah, it's true! But there is an unfortunate corollary:
*THIS ONLY WORKS FOR SOME LANGUAGES*
Because it doesn't work on languages where (1) the author did not have a strong design ethos [PHP] (2) there were many authors not communicating with each other [JavaScript] (3) the author kept writing themselves into corners because they tried to do too much earlier in the design process [Perl, JavaScript]
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@jrose I think whether "think like the designer" works for guessing accurate mental models on the fly has a lot to do with whether I enjoy working with a language (possibly this is true of computer programs in general for me)
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@mcc “Nothing in programming can ultimately be mysterious, because there’s always a reason why things are the way they are. Unfortunately sometimes the reason is outdated, accidental, emergent behavior, or irrelevant to what you’re currently doing.”
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