[E-Lang] syntax for newbies: where's the dot?

[zooko@mad-scientist.com]

Okay, the number one syntactic ingredient that C/C++/Perl/Java coders
want to see is curly braces to delimit blocks.  E has done the Right
Thing on that one.  Good!  Now the next thing that C++/Java/Python
people will check for is:


objname.methname(arg1, arg2)


Oops!  E has, for some reason I haven't learned yet[1], changed this
hallowed tradition to


objname methname(arg1, arg2)


This may well cause some of the world's less adventurous programmers to
avoid E, especially when the other syntactic complexity starts to
interact with it.


The pickiness of average programmers on matters of syntax can hardly be
overstated.  The vast majority of them appear to think that the only
salient differences between languages are syntactic differences, and of
all of the reaons not to learn Python that I have heard, only one
person did *not* start with an objection to the block-indentation
style.


So if you will, please practice your powers of persuasion, pretend I am
a petulant Python programmer, and explain to me why I can't write
"fork.smash(spamlump)" in E.


Regards,

Zooko

[1]  If I were acting in my role of apprentice E hacker, I would have
consulted the docs and the archives and figured out why this was
chosen.  But instead I'm acting in my role as lazy, reluctant Java
programmer...