[PD-dev] initbang and friends WAS: run-up to release 0.43

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Aug 24, 2010, at 3:04 AM, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:

> On 2010-08-24 05:39, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>
>>> or use [constructorbang] and [destructorbang]
>>
>> [createbang] and [destroybang] is a nice pair. :)
>>
>
> yes, but they have 2 drawbacks:
>
> - the seem to be "actors" rather than "reactors"; e.g. i would expect
> [destroybang] to destroy something, rather than tell me when things  
> are
> destroyed. (btw, [loadbang] has the same issue)

If you know what a bang means, I think its quite clear that these  
produce bangs related to "load", "create", etc.

> - they invent different names for things already well established and
> baptized in the computer science, namely "constructor" and  
> "destructor".
> this adds confusion for people that already know the concept, and
> doesn't help people that don't know the concepts yet (and i firmly
> believe that we shouldn't take patchers for fools - regardless of
> whether we want to be pedagogical or not)
>
> the main pro is, that the names are shorter.


But Pd was created as a reaction against the overcomplicatedness of  
computer science, and those words are a perfect example of it.  CS  
does not have bang, abstractions, patches, etc. yet somehow we  
communicate ;)  Pd does not have constructors and destructors, tho the  
implementation might sometimes.

.hc



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