[snip]
from ordinary usage ("method", "call", "object", "integer", "%",
"@"). It is incumbent upon one learning a programming language to
learn the specific semantics and syntax, and complaints that it is
unlike other languages (programming or otherwise) are feckless.
Quite true. Learning those terms is part of the basics of
programming. How a particular language does something is not.
If I were to create a programming language, it would be
reasonable for me to expect that people would know what "method",
"call", etc. mean. It would not be so for something idiosyncratic to
my language.
That seems to be a rather arbitrary division.
Not at all. Here is how to tell the difference:
"method" and "call" are ordinary terms of the industry. If I
come up with a term for something, it might become a term of the
industry, but it certainly will not be at first.
Do you know what the term "Turing chart" means? I made it up
years ago. It refers to a particular representation of a finite state
automaton. It is rather obviously on the other side of the divide
from "method" and "call".
If you look at languages weighted after current use, then I think you
will see that octal constants are used more than call keyword.
No, I can not remember the last time I saw production code with
deliberately-used octal constants. In fact, I do not think that I
have ever seen code with the leading zero octal constant (except as a
documentation example or as an example of this problem).
From time to time, I do see call statements (or their
equivalent). I will be seeing more and more. The call statement in
T-SQL is execute, and that is used quite a bit.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko