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Sure. I've recently finished writing 18,000 programming language statements in Visual Basic .NET on 80,000 lines of typing, including comments and blank lines

by graycat 11y ago

Sure. I've recently finished writing 18,000 programming language statements in Visual Basic .NET on 80,000 lines of typing, including comments and blank lines, and so far I have never even once used inheritance, either single or multiple. I don't even know how they would handle naming conflicts with multiple inheritance. Maybe Microsoft's many classes in .NET are making heavy use of inheritance, but I don't. So, inheritance is okay, but I don't use it directly. It just isn't a tool I use; it stays in the bottom of my toolbox. I use classes much like structs in C or structures in PL/I. Yes, classes are a little more general, and I do make use of some of that generality. But, PL/I structures are quite a bit more general than structs in C and, really, nearly as useful as classes. And, for "addressing" as in the OP, the array addressing in PL/I structures is much more efficient than addressing in classes. The OP is correct: I don't think of classes and inheritance as representing a is-a relationship. Sorry, I just don't do that. Don't need it. Or, I'm big on collection classes (hopefully based on AVL or red-black trees) and did write my own key-value store for session state storage for my Web site, and that usage can be regarded as using is-a, but, again, I don't get is-a from class inheritance -- just don't need that. And the OP is correct: A lot that is in my code has its meaning clear only in the comments. The code is like the displayed equations in a calculus or physics book, and the text between the displayed equations is like the comments. Both the text in those books and the comments in the code are crucial. Yes, the meaning of the code is crucial, but for meaning I want to use a natural language, e.g., English, in the comments.

rumcajz 11y ago
But why not use assembly with a lot of comments then? Higher level languages aspire to take at least some of the "meaning" stuff that would otherwise be in comments and represent it using in-language constructs.
- graycat 11y ago
  Good observation. Likely the answer is, again, similar to what is done in a calculus or physics book: E.g., in a calculus book, there's a lot behind the Riemann integral, and in physics, behind the electric field, so in those books we don't express everything as just simple arithmetic with comments. And, yes, in my code, when I write a function or subroutine, I give it a mnemonic name and have it do some work that has meaning that is described in the comments. But here is for me a telling point: In grad school, my best math prof just stated that math is written in complete sentences. So, the mathematical symbols do not replace the natural language, e.g., English in the sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, etc. Usually good mathematical notation has some mnemonic hints of the meaning, but, still, the meaning is in the text, not the symbols. So, net, there is limited utility and future in trying to have programming language syntax replace the English language for communicating the meaning.

by graycat 11y ago

rumcajz 11y ago

But why not use assembly with a lot of comments then? Higher level languages aspire to take at least some of the "meaning" stuff that would otherwise be in comments and represent it using in-language constructs.

graycat 11y ago
Good observation. Likely the answer is, again, similar to what is done in a calculus or physics book: E.g., in a calculus book, there's a lot behind the Riemann integral, and in physics, behind the electric field, so in those books we don't express everything as just simple arithmetic with comments. And, yes, in my code, when I write a function or subroutine, I give it a mnemonic name and have it do some work that has meaning that is described in the comments. But here is for me a telling point: In grad school, my best math prof just stated that math is written in complete sentences. So, the mathematical symbols do not replace the natural language, e.g., English in the sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, etc. Usually good mathematical notation has some mnemonic hints of the meaning, but, still, the meaning is in the text, not the symbols. So, net, there is limited utility and future in trying to have programming language syntax replace the English language for communicating the meaning.