Re: [Hecl-devel] newbie vs upvar

[David W. <dav...@gm...>]

Of couse Cameron is right - upvar isn't necessary in a lot of cases,
but what I find distressing is the fact that these people are pretty
unclear on how things work.

A sign of a well designed thing is that you can pick it up and use it
even if you're not an expert.

Obviously this isn't true for everything (airplanes, dangerous tools,
for example), however, it's a good guiding principle, especially where
it doesn't get in the way of designing something that also works well
for experts and doesn't impede their work.

That said, even my reference stuff doesn't save you from the
name/$name dichotomy, because some commands still use names, and
without doubt using the Tcl style variables is a lot easier to
implement.

Perhaps what we should do is brainstorm a bit to see if there is any
way to better communicate to the user the functionality of the
Tcl-style call-by-name semantics via command names or other
hints/syntax/...something.  The goal being that someone looks at a
block of code and "basically understands" more or less what it does
without having to look at a manual.

-- 
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/