Processing Notes, 26 March 2006

So it's been quite a while since my last post, but with the AAC course focused on projects, I've been giving more tutorials and doing less large teaching.

Today in a tutorial, I stumbled upon another nit-pick with Processing's adaptation of the Java syntax: Processing's designers wisely choose to abandon Java's requirement of “one public class per file,” but the pendulum can swing the other direction. We should not be afraid to make the syntax more restrictive when it helps learning.

An example of this is single statement bodies. Processing should never allow this:


    for (int i=0; ...)
       doSomething(i);


But should enforce:


    for (int i=0; ...) {
        doSomething(i);
    }


Again this is very subtle and almost ridiculous, but details matter when teaching.