I know we're in brainstorming mode, so please don't interpret this as criticism of your suggestion.
Don't named variables serve the same purpose as pronouns? What's an example of a pronoun-like usage in a hypothetical programming language?
Don't named variables serve the same purpose as pronouns? What's an example of a pronoun-like usage in a hypothetical programming language?
Variable names are closer to real names, than pronouns. Try taking any piece of narration and remove the pronouns; it'll read something like:
Mark woke up in the morning when Mark's alarm went off. Mark dangled Mark's feet over the side of Mark's bed, and slipped Mark's feet into Mark's slippers.
A lot of code reads like that, too.
if (x > maximum) {
it = maximum; // 'it' refers to x
}
Several languages have usage I'd consider "pronoun-like". Perl has $_ and Bash has $?. Unfortunately, "$?" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and there's some truth to criticisms of Perl readability. That may be related to the the quantity of the that it supports though.
self in various languages supporting OO is a fairly common example of what I'd consider good pronoun-like usage - if I'm inside a method that belongs to a class, what self refers to is accessible and largely unambiguous.
>>> class Foo:
... def __init__(Foo, x):
... Foo.x = x
...
>>> foo = Foo(5)
>>> foo.x
5
type Foo struct {
X int
}
func (Foo Foo) Bar() int {
return Foo.X * 2
}
var Foo = {
x: 5,
foo: function() {
Foo = this
return Foo.x * 2;
}
}