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Re: An article on writing Perl extensions without XS

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From:
Zefram
Date:
December 17, 2013 11:19
Subject:
Re: An article on writing Perl extensions without XS
Message ID:
20131217111934.GJ21945@fysh.org
Christian Walde wrote:
>Zefram in #p5p failed to show me any other possible reason, since he
>himself tentatively agreed that the arguments boil down to
>"tradition".

That's a misstatement of the position I was expressing.  I argued that the
difficulty in understanding XS-generated code comes from the concepts,
not from the cryptic variable names.  I also argued that, due to the
stereotyped use of the XS-generated variables, it is appropriate for
them to have short names.  These issues do not boil down to tradition,
and I did not agree to any statement that they did.

Where tradition comes in is that, as these concepts appear in every
xsub ever, there is a network effect in favour of using the same names
for them everywhere.  There is value in using the traditional names,
as Steffen does in his article.  This effect of tradition is distinct
from my argument in favour of short names per se.  Tradition does not
underly the psychological factors that make short names appropriate.
More the reverse: the psychological factors are part of what caused this
tradition to arise in the first place.

-zefram

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