General developer forum

I don't know if you're on the wrong track... did get scared with very verbose lines in your earlier examples

// this is good, I wonder if it means h1, so
echo $OUTPUT->heading(str, int);
// could be the shorter, self-explanatory
// and more flexible
echo $OUTPUT->h1(str, int);

In terms of the (great) example in assignment, I wonder about some minor improvements:

• Can make_grades_menu() morph into a call that wraps around choose_from_menu() and returns the HTML?
• shorter var names there can help...
• splitting the call line in the parameters can make it more readable

You probably know all these tricks already. I won't say it's an easy challenge -- it is rather hard.

Will try and think about good examples from other projects. One of the things I do have in mind is that if a given call has too many params, it is perhaps doing too many things, and the approach could be rethought with a bit of a wider scope.

(Like - could the grades-specific "make" call return a richer array or an object, and split the params between make calls and the choose_from_menu() implementation? )

Another question: can we "inline" object creation in a short format? Something like

foocall(obj(foo=>bar, bar=>baz));

if we can do that, and combine it with short method names and param names, then the potential is good

I am a big fan of named parameters which are self-documenting -- in PHP it's either an object or an array. It is good to be able to prepare it in advance or put it inline. With an array you can do it "inline" with the clumsy array():

 foocall(array( foo => $int,
                bar => $str )); 

This is already a bit verbose vertically and horizontally. It can work really well if you keep funtion/method names short, and varnames short.

The most important thing, in terms of verbosity, is to keep things like varnames and functionnames clear but short, so when you put a comment, it is about something you want the reader to note.

I'll make a liberal adaptation of Tim's example from assignment:

 // Assuming assignment had a "module-specific"
 // "HTML elements creation" object as a helper
 // MHTML for "module HTML"
 echo $MHTML->choose(array(asmt => $this->assignment,
                           grade => $sbm->grade,
                           def => -1
                           focus => false,
                           enabled =  $enabled // true after foo happens
 ));

I've taken lots of liberties here -- it's not accurate. What I want to illustrate is that the humdrum 'boilerplate' of usual settings should be as short and sweet as possible, so that the important comment "this is only trie after foo happens" stands out.

Writing this in markdown probablt messed up indentation

Of course, it'd be fantastic if PHP could understand [] or {} to build an "anonymous" array or object.