Project Elvis

[Michael]

I can't quite see why this proposal is such a big deal to people 
- as has been restated, it's just a quick change in the parser 
for a slight contraction in the code, and nothing 
language-breaking, it's not a big change to the language at all.

On Monday, 6 November 2017 at 19:13:59 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
> I am all for the Elvis operator, however I have two 
> reservations about it. The first is that I don't see much use 
> for it without a null-conditional. The second is that the 
> current proposed syntax ?: is MUCH to easily confused with ?.
>
> This is not easy to read: obj1?.obj2?.prop3?:constant.
>
> When designing syntax sugar, ergonomics are very important, 
> otherwise people won't use it. Microsoft spent a LOT of time 
> and treasure to learn these lessons for us. I see no reason to 
> ignore them just because "we don't like Microsoft"
>
> My proposal would be to copy what MSFT did, expect that I would 
> I would introduce both operators at the same time.
>
> Syntax as follows: obj1?.obj2?.prop3 ?? constant
>
> In practice I don't see much use of the idiom outside of 
> null's. The ONLY other thing that would work there is a boolean 
> field and you might as well just return the boolean itself 
> because the return values have to match types.

I feel this is kind of embellished somewhat. When you write

> This is not easy to read: obj1?.obj2?.prop3?:constant.

you're not separating it out as you do when you write your 
preferred version:

> Syntax as follows: obj1?.obj2?.prop3 ?? constant

How is

> obj1?.obj2?.prop3 ?: constant

not as easy to read as


> obj1?.obj2?.prop3 ?? constant

to me they are the same in terms of readability, only with ?? you 
have greater chances of mistyping and adding a second ? in there 
somewhere, whereas the ?: is just a contraction of the current 
syntax, I really don't think it's that difficult, so I'm not sure 
what people's hang-ups are, but I don't think the argument that 
?? is easier to read than ?: holds any weight here, because one 
*is* a change to the language, and the other is a change to the 
parser and a contraction of a standard convention.