Lawrence Mielniczuk wrote:
I think you are missing Mike's point. It doesn't make any difference at all what development background you
come from - you don't learn any new programming language by guessing at syntax.
I would say that in fact most programmers learn new languages in exactly
that way: work from existing samples and guess at the syntax based on
their existing knowledge about other languages. This is especially true
for task-specific languages like editor macro languages and "easy"
languages like Python and XSLT.
The problem with this approach is that it works just well enough to lead
you into deep trouble when you trip over some non-obvious or
counter-intuitive language feature, such as "|" being the union operator
in XSLT expressions.
Of course, when one finds oneself in that situation, one should actually
consult the spec or a good tutorial on the language. RTFM always applies.
Cheers,
Eliot
--
W. Eliot Kimber
Innodata Isogen
eliot(_at_)isogen(_dot_)com
www.isogen.com
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