Comments on: Subtext, revisited

By: I Write » Subtext

I Write » Subtext — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 21:51:24 +0000

[...] someone posted this link on programming reddit where someone had posted a link to the the page where Jonathan Edwards [...]

By: Jesse McNelis

Jesse McNelis — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 04:44:38 +0000

I blogged about this a long while back. The RPG game example given is easily refactored to be easier to read with out the need for subtext.
http://blog.jessta.id.au/2007/12/subtext-is-research-project-in-creating.html

Imagine the RPG example with a switch statement of 20 options, it would be ridiculous in subtext and very difficult to read.

The flexibility of text is very useful in allowing the programmer to represent the particular logic in a way that makes it easier to read for a specific problem. But the idea of having programming involve less text and more manipulation of data structures is an interesting idea, but this implementation is terrible.

- Jesse McNelis

By: Michiel Trimpe

Michiel Trimpe — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:04:41 +0000

I read the paper on which this language is based a while ago and I personally believe that this needn’t be an all-encompassing language, but is best suited as a plugin into existing languages where needed.

Several applications I’ve written had pieces of functionality that could have been “written” far more expressively and be far more self-explanatory when using a “language” like this.

By: Dave Ray

Dave Ray — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:14:18 +0000

For what it’s worth, Jonathan Edwards (the author of Subtext) grudgingly released the source code a little while ago on his blog: http://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=160

By: Not Chris

Not Chris — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:08:24 +0000

The Subtext FAQ says “Subtext 2 has been designed to be much less mouse-centric than the prior version. Although not yet implemented, it should be possible to do everything from the keyboard.”

By: Chris Done

Chris Done — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:52:33 +0000

“Also, it seems to rely heavily on the mouse, while the general trend in programming editors and IDEs seems to be, to use the keyboard as much as possible.”

I’m pretty sure the mouse is just the author’s preference. As many have said, one could easily provide a purely keyboard-controlled interface.