Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 00:25:45 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

It’s like, I don’t know ... you’re trying to save space. Why?
 
It’s like programming inside an apartment block, instead of having a
bungalow with a yard of your own.

It's a matter of balance. Needlessly crunching things to fit onto a
single line is hard to read, yes - but compulsively indenting and
splitting across lines can get out of hand, too. It seems to me that a
lot of people in this age of "cinematic" aspect ratios and super-sized
displays in personal computing forget that eye-travel isn't free, and
spreading information across maximal space can make it *harder* to keep
track of context.

Better, IMHO, to group operations in a way that logically reflects the
structure of the program, to whatever extent that *A.* is syntactically
feasible in $LANGUAGE, and *B.* doesn't crowd things to the point of
hampering basic readability.

(Of course, whether or not the ternary operator is fundamentally
confusing is an entirely separate question.)