Humor: The Evolution of a Programmer

[pll at lanminds.com]

In a message dated: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 14:02:26 EST
Derek Martin said:

>Just because it's well documented doesn't mean it isn't cryptic.  It
>is cryptic because it is a single letter which isn't mnemonic for
>anything intuitively obvious.

So, what you're saying is that it's cryptic until you read the docs 
and understand it?  How is that different than anything else which is 
documented?

GDB has the 'print' command.  How is that more intuitively obvious 
for "evaluating an expression" than 'x'?  To me 'print' means just 
that, print something, not evaluate something, an certainly not "show 
me the value of this variable".  So why not 'x'?  It seems just as 
intuitive as anything else short of 'evaluate_this_expression foo'.

In short, your argument doesn't seem to make any sense.  If it is 
well documented, it doesn't matter if it's intuitive.  Once you know 
it, you know it.  If you can't remember it, that's what the 'help' 
command is for, which clearly states:

	x|m expr       Evals expr in list context,
			dumps the result or lists methods.

If it's (well) documented[1], and you don't read the documentation, there's no 
one to blame but yourself.

Footnotes:
----------
[1]	Well documented means just that.  Obviously, if the 
	documentation sucks, and you end up more confused after 
	reading the docs[2] than you started out, then that's the fault 
	of the doc/pkg maintainers and developers, which gives you 
	every right to bitch about it :)

[2]	IMO, none of this applies to Perl, which is recognized by 
	others far more important than myself as having about the most
	complete, comprehensive, and well written documentation of any
	programming language ever!
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
--
	It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
   but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.

	 If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!