Lexical versus dynamic "this"

[Axel Rauschmayer]

Quoting Andrew Dupont:

> (b) the ->/=> distinction is, I think, too subtle. Rebinding dramatically changes the meaning of the function, so I'd prefer if the notation guaranteed that a user couldn't gloss over that by mistaking -> for => or vice/versa.

I agree. Are newbies ever going to be able to handle this? If we are going to overhaul function semantics, wouldn’t it make sense to adopt a more explicit approach?

> myfunc(param1, param2) -> { ... } // lexical this
> var obj = {
>     mymethod: (this, param1, param2) -> { ... } // dynamic this
> }

This is how Python handles methods. I think there were objections to this approach, but unfortunately I can neither remember them nor find them online.

I think I’ll get used to the infix operator, but would prefer if it could be prefix (easier on *my* eyes, easier to parse, closer to current syntactic style). Is the backslash already taken?

\(x,y) x + y
#\(x) x +y  // frozen

-- 
Dr. Axel Rauschmayer

axel at rauschma.de
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