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Discussion on: Sh*tpost: can we stop saying "syntactic sugar"?

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Gabe Kangas

I always interpret syntactic sugar as "unnecessary shortcuts". So a third party library that adds a layer of convenience functions on top of AutoLayout, for example. If all I think it's doing is providing some syntactic sugar, then I'll probably stay away. Why save some keystrokes and build up crutch with some shortcuts when I can just do it the "right way"?

There are so many third party libraries who's sole purpose is to decrease the verbosity of your code, and I don't really see "typing too much" as a problem I have.

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Jen Chan

I'm prone to take your approach of writing in plain and simple ways before I embark on sprinkling. The latter is for refactoring or a second or third pass at something. Most of that is because I know i have a primitive handle on the language and it's better to go tried and true instead of trying to use every little thing just because I found out about it. But reading other folks code or tutorial docs also kind of clue me in on how often people use a certain something.