Re: Minor syntax question.

On 31 Mar 2004, at 17:24, Mike Spille wrote:
>
>  The difference here is exposing a Closure as an Object vs. treating 
> it as magic.
>
>  On the Object side of the argument:  If you allow only ".call()" 
> syntax, then you're telling programmers "A Closure is an Object.  Deal 
> with it as such".  For conflicts in naming - resolve them as you would 
> any other object naming conflict. 
>
> On the Magic side: Closures are made unique (and perhaps somewhat 
> mysterious  with rules unto themselves.
>
>  Now - as I see it, Closures are conceptually unique - but they are 
> conceptually unique _objects_, not unique items that fall outside of 
> the object system.  They are constructed with some magic in the 
> language because that magic is absolutely necessary, and there's some 
> magic as well in how they can package up their enclosing variable 
> environment  and carry it around with them.  But the user doesn't and 
> shouldn't have to care about that - once it's created, a Closure is 
> just an object with some interesting semantics.
>
>  By allowing only ".call()" syntax, you're not just eliminating 
> ambiguity, you're also reinforcing to newbies to the language that a 
> Closure is a special kind of Object, but when all is said and done 
> it's still just an object.  In this context, it's an Object with a 
> call() method.  Newbies can easily deal with this and understand it, 
> and they can figure out how to work through naming conflicts because 
> it's the same way they avoid naming conflicts for anything else back 
> in Java land.  There's a slight extra baggage for newbies, but it's 
> slight - and I'd argue that even experts can get a bit confused right 
> now with the existing syntax, and mandated ".call()" is even valuable 
> to them.

Agreed. I'm becoming less and less keen on the () magic with closures. 
I've already been bitten at least once with confusion over a variable 
name containing a closure and a method name. At least using foo.call() 
then its immediately clear of the users intention - that 'foo' is a 
variable. Saying foo() could mean two things, a local variable called 
foo which happens to be a closure, or a method called 'foo'.

So I think we should maybe back off the () magic.

James
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