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

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ver_kat profile image
Veronika T

I recently had an idea for a t-shirt for women with "syntactic sugar" on it - sort of an appropriation of the trend a few years ago to have "angel" on the back of your sweatpants. Anyway, when I googled to see if I could buy one someone else designed, I found one that said, "Assembly is just syntactic sugar." Probably the most extreme (and I assume ironic) assessment of what you express here.

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Jen Chan

HAHA oh yeah a couple of my friends recall now and again the 2000s "Juicy" sweatpants. That trend had spread to Victoria's Secret Pink underwear and I recall being kind of distrubed some time back teen underwear seemed to be lined with catcalling phrases.

I don't know Assembly so that statement is lost on me... but lol Date.now() + createdOn... I am finally comfortable with people saying "syntactic sugar" after hearing all the contexts it's used in. I still wish we all agreed on a semantic definition like "shorthand for doing the same thing".

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Veronika T

Assembly is just a step above binary, so VERY low level - the lowest you can get without using ones and zeroes. It's not particularly human friendly - well I guess it is compared to ones and zeroes. :-) So technically it IS syntactic sugar, but not in the way people mean to use that phrase. I guess it implies people who complain about syntactic sugar might as well be using ones and zeroes if they're so above whatever they're talking about.