Re: The poor state of documentation of pcase like things.

[Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Are you serious?  We've just had a long discussion about its missing
> or incomplete or inadequate documentation,

I know that, but that we can and want to fix, so it is no argument about
whether pcase is really eval or not.

> including a long dispute about whether it would be better to quote _.

Yes, and...???

> My summary of that discussion is that the syntax is complicated and
> quite weird.

Where did we at all talk about the syntax?

Or do you just mean those examples that were shorter than with any other
tool?  Or those that were faster?

> Using such a beast where it is not required makes reading harder
> because it requires the reader to understand its syntax, if nothing
> else.

And that's the real problem: (some) people refrain to try to understand
the syntax and prefer to complain.  The syntax is very simple for its
expressiveness.  But maybe I'm just obsessed by the beast.

Sorry, I give up.  pcase seems to scare off people somehow.  If 50
percent of the people are not able to cope with the thing, for whatever
reason, and get stalled whenever they see it, I think we probably can't
use it.  A pity.

Is it even worth to update the docs of pcase?  Will anyone from those
antagonizing it really try to learn how the thing is supposed to be
used?  I've got the feeling some people anyway prefer to gain their
knowledge from such pcase-bashing discussions.


Michael.