<HEAD><TITLE>discuss@charon: [569] in "Coldmud discussion meeting"</TITLE>
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<HR><H2>Re: Assignment Operator.</H2>
<H3>daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tue Nov  8 20:25:39 1994
)</H3>
<PRE>
From: brandon@avon.declab.usu.edu
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 94 18:23:42 -0700

&lt; I've thought about this, and have a serious compromise suggestion:
&lt;
&lt; Make ':=' a synonym for '='.
&lt;
&lt; Then we can measure the relative productivity of people who use
&lt; ':=' over those who use '=' and finally stick a cork in whining
&lt; of the form: `9/10 clueless programmers want '.
&lt; I have no objection (as I've stressed time and again) to people
&lt; voting with their feet (or even typing with them.)

... so you would suggest adding the operator ':=' to the driver along
side '='?  I would be rather reluctant to make such a change because
it is 'dirty' (so to speak).  Not to mention that if the idea were
to measure how much of either is used when would we put a stopping
point to collect the data and make a decision?  Also, I am proposing
this change now in anticipation of the future.  Quite frankly I personally
don't care which one I use in my code, as I do not have a problem with
either one.  However, I do think that problems will arise in the unknown
future as more people begin to use it, and in my desire to make coldmud as
appealing and easy to learn as is realistically possible I think this change
would be worthwile.

My drive behind proposing such a change is not because I want to patronize
the "clueless programmers", but because I want the environment in ColdMUD
to be as streamlined, clean, and simple to learn for _OTHER_ people, not
myself.  This is not a footstool which would be used later to try and
promote other dastardly alterations to the language.  Infact, it is probably
the _only_ change of it's type I can think of (others which have been
suggested would be to use the MOO style endif/endfor etc--which I would be
against (as Ray would say, it is more characters ;) )).


-Brandon
</PRE>
