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He qualified it with the Alan Perlis epigram: "The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed there is much duplication of process. It is a p

by jasode 11y ago

He qualified it with the Alan Perlis epigram: "The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed there is much duplication of process. It is a perfect vehicle for hiding information." My "string type" examples to help uncover defects in parsing & yanking were not relevant to Alan Perlis criticisms. The "hiding information" of strings is an orthogonal issue.

mannykannot 11y ago
Given that Kazinator's post is in reply to one that specifically gives NSString vs. NSURL as an example, and you were making a point that you say does not apply to that example, then the onus was on you to make it clear that you were going off on a tangent. >My "string type" examples to help uncover defects in parsing & yanking were not relevant to Alan Perlis criticisms. Did you mean to write that Alan Perlis' criticisms were not relevant to your examples? Anyway, this should perhaps have brought it to your attention that you were going off on a tangent, given that Kazinator chose to qualify his point with this quote.
- jasode 11y ago
  Yes, kazinator replied to a post that happened to have NSURL but he made a very generalized sounding piece of advice: "Typing strings to solve bugs is the epitome of an anti-pattern." It is not unreasonable to interpret that sentence as some kind of "universal" advice. If he meant it in specific circumstances, he might have said, "solve that kind of bug" instead of "solve bugs". (It's not even clear if kazinator felt that NSURL is a bad example of string-but-not-really-a-string. NSURL is an object with well-defined structure and not a pure string. It therefore doesn't fit the criticism of the Alan Perlis epigram) If I went off on a tangent, then I felt the door was opened by kazinator's (seemingly) universal statement which expanded the scope of discussion. Whether kazinator meant it universally is irrelevant because that's how I read it and that point in time is long gone. All my subsequent replies flowed from that (mis)interpretation. In any case, writing universal replies to posts with specific examples is not uncommon on HN or any forum for that matter. It's typical ebb & flow of discussions. Lastly, I looked at your history of posts and you're just a generally argumentative type of communicator. The mods have asked people to read posts with a charitable interpretation but you don't seem to follow that spirit. I'm fine with debate but I'll ignore your posts with needless hostility. Regards,
  - mannykannot 11y ago
    I have to admit that there is some truth there, and I apologize for implying that you were deliberately misrepresenting the issues under discussion. I wasn't giving much thought to your arguments because they seemed to be fundamentally missing the point, and you were probably thinking the same thing. As it happens, I was considering the general case, and the examples of URLs and SQL came from Mike Ash's article, where he was considering the interpretation of text as information. My interpretation of cballard's post is that he regards an URL to be primarily a string, and therefore that an NSURL is, in some way, a typed string. I didn't think it was a good example, but as I was making a general point, I did not see that as mattering - I could make my point with Mike Ash's general examples instead. My interpretation of Mike Ash's original statement is that it would be useful to have different string types where strings have different interpretations, and I disagree - the semantics of a type do not depend on its textual representation (if that were so, it would not be possible to translate those semantics between languages.) If I now understand your position correctly, it is that it is useful to have different string types because there are several different ways to interpret the underlying bit sequence as a valid string. I am not convinced that is the best solution to the problem created by us having incompatible bytes-as-text representations, but I agree that it is not wrong to consider it as an exception to the general rule.

by jasode 11y ago

mannykannot 11y ago

Given that Kazinator's post is in reply to one that specifically gives NSString vs. NSURL as an example, and you were making a point that you say does not apply to that example, then the onus was on you to make it clear that you were going off on a tangent. >My "string type" examples to help uncover defects in parsing & yanking were not relevant to Alan Perlis criticisms. Did you mean to write that Alan Perlis' criticisms were not relevant to your examples? Anyway, this should perhaps have brought it to your attention that you were going off on a tangent, given that Kazinator chose to qualify his point with this quote.

jasode 11y ago
Yes, kazinator replied to a post that happened to have NSURL but he made a very generalized sounding piece of advice: "Typing strings to solve bugs is the epitome of an anti-pattern." It is not unreasonable to interpret that sentence as some kind of "universal" advice. If he meant it in specific circumstances, he might have said, "solve that kind of bug" instead of "solve bugs". (It's not even clear if kazinator felt that NSURL is a bad example of string-but-not-really-a-string. NSURL is an object with well-defined structure and not a pure string. It therefore doesn't fit the criticism of the Alan Perlis epigram) If I went off on a tangent, then I felt the door was opened by kazinator's (seemingly) universal statement which expanded the scope of discussion. Whether kazinator meant it universally is irrelevant because that's how I read it and that point in time is long gone. All my subsequent replies flowed from that (mis)interpretation. In any case, writing universal replies to posts with specific examples is not uncommon on HN or any forum for that matter. It's typical ebb & flow of discussions. Lastly, I looked at your history of posts and you're just a generally argumentative type of communicator. The mods have asked people to read posts with a charitable interpretation but you don't seem to follow that spirit. I'm fine with debate but I'll ignore your posts with needless hostility. Regards,
- mannykannot 11y ago
  I have to admit that there is some truth there, and I apologize for implying that you were deliberately misrepresenting the issues under discussion. I wasn't giving much thought to your arguments because they seemed to be fundamentally missing the point, and you were probably thinking the same thing. As it happens, I was considering the general case, and the examples of URLs and SQL came from Mike Ash's article, where he was considering the interpretation of text as information. My interpretation of cballard's post is that he regards an URL to be primarily a string, and therefore that an NSURL is, in some way, a typed string. I didn't think it was a good example, but as I was making a general point, I did not see that as mattering - I could make my point with Mike Ash's general examples instead. My interpretation of Mike Ash's original statement is that it would be useful to have different string types where strings have different interpretations, and I disagree - the semantics of a type do not depend on its textual representation (if that were so, it would not be possible to translate those semantics between languages.) If I now understand your position correctly, it is that it is useful to have different string types because there are several different ways to interpret the underlying bit sequence as a valid string. I am not convinced that is the best solution to the problem created by us having incompatible bytes-as-text representations, but I agree that it is not wrong to consider it as an exception to the general rule.