[PD-dev] pd-extended loadlib request

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at eds.org
Fri Jan 25 23:14:48 CET 2008


On Jan 24, 2008, at 4:14 AM, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Hallo,
> IOhannes m zmoelnig hat gesagt: // IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
>
>> Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>> On Jan 23, 2008, at 4:50 PM, Frank Barknecht wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hallo,
>>>> Hans-Christoph Steiner hat gesagt: // Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I think they were only added to Max/Pd as typing shortcuts,  
>>>>> which is
>>>>> very weak argument in favor of them.  I am not saying we should
>>>>> remove them, but I think they should be avoided as a matter of
>>>>> convention.
>>>>>
>>>>> What other programming language has aliases?
>>>> It's not that uncommon if you think of operator overloading in C+ 
>>>> + and
>>>> many other languages, or things like "from math import radians  
>>>> as rad"
>>>> in Python.
>>
>> no language with a native support for fixed aliases comes to my mind
>> (apart from max/msp) - but i am sure there are people with more  
>> insight
>> into different languages than me.
>
> I actually do think, that alias names bare some resemblance to
> operator overloading, but of course Pd doesn't support operator
> overloading like the other languages, so aliases are the workaround we
> use. But the use is similar: Operator overloading includes adding
> an additional name and syntax for a function/method:
>
>  A = Matrix.new(m,n)
>  B = Matrix.new(n,m)
>  C = Matrix.multipy(A,B)
>
> now with an overloaded operator* you can also say: C = A*B.
>
> In my eyes that's very similar to the mtx_mul and mtx_* aliases in
> iemmatrix. True operator overloading of course would mean, that you
> could user the regular "+" object for matrices in Pd as well.
>
>>>> Shortcuts can be a very strong argument, and especially in
>>>> a graphical language, [t a a a a a a] often is better than
>>>> [trigger anything anything anything anything anything anything]
>>>
>>> I find that it is rarely better to use [t a a a a] and I rarely use
>>> any aliases.
>>
>> the latter is true.
>> otoh, i never use [trigger anything anything anything anything] and
>> often use aliases.
>
> To each his own, especially with style questions, but I don't know
> anybody else besides Hans who prefers the long version of triggers.

That's what I teach in workshops now, I think it makes for much more  
readable code for said reasons, so watch out, we are multiplying! :D

.hc


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Computer science is no more related to the computer than astronomy is  
related to the telescope.      -Edsger Dykstra






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