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Many of the people who use REBOL have strong math backgrounds. They're not hindered by REBOL's precedence rules. In fact, REBOL has a math-like elegance to it.
It's great how you try to sell a bug or missing features, as something great.
Ideally, yes I can adapt to any system you could propose. The question is: Why should I?*
C works well, it's not my favorite language; but it gets the job done and I've never found it necessary to look at precedence rules in C while writing (but then again C was my first language.)
Now that said, having strict left to right precedence would be a better system then math's. Just try to convince the mathematicians of that.
*NOTE: I probably will try out REBOL when I find time to, but your argument "just get used to it" is very weak and deserves addressing on principle.
I find it interesting that there is now a discussion on math precedence, which is usually not an issue for those who try REBOL.
There is not some grand scheme at work here. REBOLs design is based on pragmatically solving general problems, not to build on or tweak the conventions of other languages.
REBOLs form of math precedence happens to reduce the number of rules to remember to a single left to right rule.




Member since:
2010-06-09
In your head, yes. But that's exactly what programming is: rearranging thoughts all the time.
Many of the people who use REBOL have strong math backgrounds. They're not hindered by REBOL's precedence rules. In fact, REBOL has a math-like elegance to it.
One way to look at it is that a math background should make you a more flexible thinker. When you start a math assignment, you first have to define the rules of the system in which you will calculate. Different math systems have quite different rules. It shouldn't be a big stretch to define different rules for operator precedence.