[PD] style guide idea: [send foo] versus [; foo(

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

Here's something that I'd like to propose for the style guide, based  
on my teaching experience:

- use [send foo]  instead of [; foo( for all sends that aren't  
dynamically set

A lot of people find the [; foo( syntax confusing, and since it is  
commonly used, it often gets in the way of newbies understanding the  
patch.  While the [; foo( syntax is definitely useful for dynamic  
sends, I don't think there is an advantage to using for the regular  
sends.  So for example:

[dsp 1(
|
[send pd]

instead of

|;                /
|pd dsp 1 \

This change highlights the dataflow aspect of the messages over the  
text-style programming with syntax of the message box.  At the very  
least, I think that the help patches should use this style, and I have  
started to use this style in my regular programming and it feels quite  
natural once you are used to it.  I find it easier to read.

(as for [s foo] versus [send foo] that's an issue I want to avoid in  
this discussion).

.hc


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