8 ms·

> I mean, just try it in Java. For ages JodaTime actually nailed it, and the Java 8 date API was based off this. > Not an add on type as in R or Python or Jav

> I mean, just try it in Java. For ages JodaTime actually nailed it, and the Java 8 date API was based off this. > Not an add on type as in R or Python or Java. Again, let's talk about the modern version of the language and not act like prior screw ups are the end all for a language. Also > 2012.01.01 + 1m1d How is that more clean than: > new DateTime(2012, 1, 1).plusMonths(1).plusDays(1)

skywhopper 11y ago
By my count it's over 30 characters less "clean". The Java syntax obscures some meaning and requires a lot more boilerplate in favor of less magical (and thus complex) syntax. I agree that this sort of first-class datetime-type representation may not be appropriate for every language, but myself, I find it refreshing and brilliant, and I'd love to see more languages support this sort of syntax instead of overloading strings or using complicated objects or APIs. It's like comparing the power and ease of using regular expressions in Perl or Ruby versus in Java or Python. In Perl and Ruby, regexes are built-in to the syntax of the language itself. They're a truly first-class type, like strings and integers are in all four languages, and like lists and dicts/hashes/associative arrays are in Perl, Ruby, and Python. I'd love to see datetime objects promoted to similar first-class native syntax support in this way in more languages. It won't be appropriate everywhere, but in the right language it'd be amazing.
- ehartsuyker 11y ago
  The Java is clean because it's perfectly understandable. I don't have to think about "+ 1m" meaning month, minute, or milli-. Verbose, yes, but the meaning is 100% unambiguous which I think makes it a better API. > overloading strings I'm pretty sure writing "+ 1m" is more of an overloading of a string than ".plusMinutes(1)".
- JadeNB 11y ago
  > By my count it's over 30 characters less "clean". If character count were really the ultimate measure of cleanliness, then we'd all be programming pointlessly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_programming) and using single-character names for any variables that slipped through. (That's not to say that shorter is never better, but rather that, when it is better, its brevity is not the only reason.)
- stanmancan 11y ago
  How is plusMonths(1).plusDays(1) obscure in any way? You could show that to my grandparents and they would be able to guess what it does. "+1m1d" on the other hand they wouldn't have a clue. Length, in either direction, does not correlate to "clean". Clarity and intent does. Clean Coder (http://www.amazon.ca/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882 http://www.amazon.ca/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmans...) does a fantastic job talking about this, it's worth picking up if you haven't read it in the past.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    "Length, in either direction, does not correlate to "clean". Clarity and intent does." Exactly. So, the first example starts with a date in a way of representing dates that will register immediately for even a lay person. The developer intends to add time to that date. The example does this with an addition operator then a value with letters representing recognizable units of time. Matter of fact, this was so obvious that I knew what the author was doing before I read the explanation. I'd probably do "min," "sec," "hr," etc to aid intuition, though. Esp avoid confusion on months vs minutes for m. Then, there's the other example. It appears to create an object. It then calls a method on that clearly adds one month. It also calls a method of that method, that object... idk that language so I don't really know the semantics of what it's doing... to add 1 day. One is definitely more clear and intuitive than the other. It also has the rare property of being easier to type. Epic win over whatever the other thing is. Not to say the other one was bad: still pretty clear. Just not as much as a straight-forward expression.
    - ehartsuyker 11y ago
      In the former, typing '2012.01.01' implicitly creates a date object (probably), and '1m1d' implicitly creates some sort of duration object (probably) and uses an operator to combine them. The Java was isn't really that different. Just more verbose, but again, I don't mind trading a few key strokes for clarity.
      - nickpsecurity 11y ago
- crispyambulance 11y ago
  The java "syntax" doesn't matter. The IDE provides context-sensitive cues as one types so that you don't have the cognitive paper-cut from having to think for even a second if "1m" means "one minute" or "one month". At a deeper level, chaining method calls to build-up an object is perfectly understandable way to modify something like a date.
32bitkid 11y ago
Personally, I think there is a more subtle conceptual idea that it glosses over that makes the more explicit Java version more "clean". > D + 1m1d != D + 1d1m Mixing time units like days, months, years (where units are intransitive) is, in my opinion, a bad idea.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Should be able to type or sanity check them like anything else. What specific issue are you worried about?
  - henrikschroder 11y ago
    2011-02-28 + 1m1d = 2011-03-29 2011-02-28 + 1d1m = 2011-04-01 (edit: stupid leap-year!)
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      Why does that happen? I'd think they were equivalent. I don't do time-series or anything to be clear. I would just expect the a + b = b + a principle to apply for the m/d value.
      - 32bitkid 11y ago
        because 1m = [28d,29d,30d,31d] depending on which month you are in. By adding 1d, pre or post, it can alter the definition of 1m.
        xixi77 11y ago
        Sure (assuming that's how a "month" is defined in this context -- I haven't actually read the whole article, so I'm not sure); but why do you find the Java syntax less confusing? They look pretty equivalent, except for one is shorter than the other.
        11y ago
nickpsecurity 11y ago
Because one is an expression like humans think of it and one is a pile of OOP. The former is more desirable. The data types are also obvious.
- ehartsuyker 11y ago
  How is "1m" more obvious that "plusMonths(1)"? I mean really, the latter is basically and English phrase. I know it's cool to shit all over OOP and Java these days, but if Haskell/Clojure/Whatever had a function (plusMonths dt 1) or something that, you wouldn't call it a pile of FP.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    I said elsewhere id add a letter to distinguish months, minutes, etc. Otherwise, you missing larger picture: it's a time series analysis language with an expression adding a value to a date. So the value's letters are a datatype or unit of time. That simple.
xixi77 11y ago
They are both about equally clear, but the former syntax will always take less time to process (unless perhaps you are a Java programmer who is familiar with the latter syntax but unfamiliar with the former, in which case it's not a valid comparison anyway). If it's an analysis-oriented package with most of the work done at a REPL, less time to type, too.
jandrese 11y ago
IMHO, working on timestamps in code like this is just asking for edge case to bite you in the ass. The only sane way I've found to work with time is to convert any timestamp into a seconds-since-the-epoch value when doing any internal work and then covert back to the timestamp format for display. As an added bonus your code won't get super messy when you start getting timestamps from different sources that are formatted differently. Everything gets normalized to the internal representation before you do work on it.
- henrikschroder 11y ago
  You can't perform the operations "add one month" or "add one year" if you're working with seconds since the epoch. For storing a timestamp, absolutely, you should use an integer-based format, counting discrete somethings since somewhen. For working with timestamps, you need all the nuance, you need something that can manipulate the different parts of it independent of each other. And finally, for displaying or reading timestamps, you need all the localization and parsing crap to figure out what "020304" means. Fourth of March 2002? Third of February 2004?
  - jandrese 11y ago
    Yes you will need to have the localization logic when you convert the timestamps, but when you store them internally as timestamps you need that localization crap every single place you use them. Adding 1 month or 1 year to the current date is usually a mistake. Quick question, what do you expect to happen when you code "Jan 31 + 1m"? What do you expect to happen when you code "Feb 29 2016 + 1y"? If you are thinking about doing this, ask yourself if it wouldn't make more sense to define your time by days instead. Jan 31 + 30 days, or Feb 29 + 365.25 days. Of course days are easy to implement on epoch time as well ( time + 30 * SECONDS_PER_DAY ).
    - henrikschroder 11y ago
      > when you store them internally as timestamps you need that localization crap every single place you use them Which is why you shouldn't do it, which is just what I said. :-) > Adding 1 month or 1 year to the current date is usually a mistake. No, I can think of many use-cases where this is useful. For example, what should Siri do if you tell it to "move today's 1 o'clock to the next month" ? Jan 31 + 1m = Feb 28/29 Feb 29 + 1y = Feb 28 SECONDS_PER_DAY is not a constant, because of leap seconds. (Or it is, and shifting between UTC and UT1 causes them to appear. I forgot. It's messy no matter how you slice it.)

skywhopper 11y ago

By my count it's over 30 characters less "clean". The Java syntax obscures some meaning and requires a lot more boilerplate in favor of less magical (and thus complex) syntax. I agree that this sort of first-class datetime-type representation may not be appropriate for every language, but myself, I find it refreshing and brilliant, and I'd love to see more languages support this sort of syntax instead of overloading strings or using complicated objects or APIs. It's like comparing the power and ease of using regular expressions in Perl or Ruby versus in Java or Python. In Perl and Ruby, regexes are built-in to the syntax of the language itself. They're a truly first-class type, like strings and integers are in all four languages, and like lists and dicts/hashes/associative arrays are in Perl, Ruby, and Python. I'd love to see datetime objects promoted to similar first-class native syntax support in this way in more languages. It won't be appropriate everywhere, but in the right language it'd be amazing.

ehartsuyker 11y ago
The Java is clean because it's perfectly understandable. I don't have to think about "+ 1m" meaning month, minute, or milli-. Verbose, yes, but the meaning is 100% unambiguous which I think makes it a better API. > overloading strings I'm pretty sure writing "+ 1m" is more of an overloading of a string than ".plusMinutes(1)".
JadeNB 11y ago
> By my count it's over 30 characters less "clean". If character count were really the ultimate measure of cleanliness, then we'd all be programming pointlessly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_programming) and using single-character names for any variables that slipped through. (That's not to say that shorter is never better, but rather that, when it is better, its brevity is not the only reason.)
stanmancan 11y ago
How is plusMonths(1).plusDays(1) obscure in any way? You could show that to my grandparents and they would be able to guess what it does. "+1m1d" on the other hand they wouldn't have a clue. Length, in either direction, does not correlate to "clean". Clarity and intent does. Clean Coder (http://www.amazon.ca/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882 http://www.amazon.ca/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmans...) does a fantastic job talking about this, it's worth picking up if you haven't read it in the past.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  "Length, in either direction, does not correlate to "clean". Clarity and intent does." Exactly. So, the first example starts with a date in a way of representing dates that will register immediately for even a lay person. The developer intends to add time to that date. The example does this with an addition operator then a value with letters representing recognizable units of time. Matter of fact, this was so obvious that I knew what the author was doing before I read the explanation. I'd probably do "min," "sec," "hr," etc to aid intuition, though. Esp avoid confusion on months vs minutes for m. Then, there's the other example. It appears to create an object. It then calls a method on that clearly adds one month. It also calls a method of that method, that object... idk that language so I don't really know the semantics of what it's doing... to add 1 day. One is definitely more clear and intuitive than the other. It also has the rare property of being easier to type. Epic win over whatever the other thing is. Not to say the other one was bad: still pretty clear. Just not as much as a straight-forward expression.
  - ehartsuyker 11y ago
    In the former, typing '2012.01.01' implicitly creates a date object (probably), and '1m1d' implicitly creates some sort of duration object (probably) and uses an operator to combine them. The Java was isn't really that different. Just more verbose, but again, I don't mind trading a few key strokes for clarity.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
crispyambulance 11y ago
The java "syntax" doesn't matter. The IDE provides context-sensitive cues as one types so that you don't have the cognitive paper-cut from having to think for even a second if "1m" means "one minute" or "one month". At a deeper level, chaining method calls to build-up an object is perfectly understandable way to modify something like a date.

32bitkid 11y ago

Personally, I think there is a more subtle conceptual idea that it glosses over that makes the more explicit Java version more "clean". > D + 1m1d != D + 1d1m Mixing time units like days, months, years (where units are intransitive) is, in my opinion, a bad idea.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Should be able to type or sanity check them like anything else. What specific issue are you worried about?
- henrikschroder 11y ago
  2011-02-28 + 1m1d = 2011-03-29 2011-02-28 + 1d1m = 2011-04-01 (edit: stupid leap-year!)
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Why does that happen? I'd think they were equivalent. I don't do time-series or anything to be clear. I would just expect the a + b = b + a principle to apply for the m/d value.
    - 32bitkid 11y ago
      because 1m = [28d,29d,30d,31d] depending on which month you are in. By adding 1d, pre or post, it can alter the definition of 1m.
      - xixi77 11y ago
        Sure (assuming that's how a "month" is defined in this context -- I haven't actually read the whole article, so I'm not sure); but why do you find the Java syntax less confusing? They look pretty equivalent, except for one is shorter than the other.
        11y ago

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Because one is an expression like humans think of it and one is a pile of OOP. The former is more desirable. The data types are also obvious.

ehartsuyker 11y ago
How is "1m" more obvious that "plusMonths(1)"? I mean really, the latter is basically and English phrase. I know it's cool to shit all over OOP and Java these days, but if Haskell/Clojure/Whatever had a function (plusMonths dt 1) or something that, you wouldn't call it a pile of FP.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  I said elsewhere id add a letter to distinguish months, minutes, etc. Otherwise, you missing larger picture: it's a time series analysis language with an expression adding a value to a date. So the value's letters are a datatype or unit of time. That simple.

xixi77 11y ago

They are both about equally clear, but the former syntax will always take less time to process (unless perhaps you are a Java programmer who is familiar with the latter syntax but unfamiliar with the former, in which case it's not a valid comparison anyway). If it's an analysis-oriented package with most of the work done at a REPL, less time to type, too.

jandrese 11y ago

IMHO, working on timestamps in code like this is just asking for edge case to bite you in the ass. The only sane way I've found to work with time is to convert any timestamp into a seconds-since-the-epoch value when doing any internal work and then covert back to the timestamp format for display. As an added bonus your code won't get super messy when you start getting timestamps from different sources that are formatted differently. Everything gets normalized to the internal representation before you do work on it.

henrikschroder 11y ago
You can't perform the operations "add one month" or "add one year" if you're working with seconds since the epoch. For storing a timestamp, absolutely, you should use an integer-based format, counting discrete somethings since somewhen. For working with timestamps, you need all the nuance, you need something that can manipulate the different parts of it independent of each other. And finally, for displaying or reading timestamps, you need all the localization and parsing crap to figure out what "020304" means. Fourth of March 2002? Third of February 2004?
- jandrese 11y ago
  Yes you will need to have the localization logic when you convert the timestamps, but when you store them internally as timestamps you need that localization crap every single place you use them. Adding 1 month or 1 year to the current date is usually a mistake. Quick question, what do you expect to happen when you code "Jan 31 + 1m"? What do you expect to happen when you code "Feb 29 2016 + 1y"? If you are thinking about doing this, ask yourself if it wouldn't make more sense to define your time by days instead. Jan 31 + 30 days, or Feb 29 + 365.25 days. Of course days are easy to implement on epoch time as well ( time + 30 * SECONDS_PER_DAY ).
  - henrikschroder 11y ago
    > when you store them internally as timestamps you need that localization crap every single place you use them Which is why you shouldn't do it, which is just what I said. :-) > Adding 1 month or 1 year to the current date is usually a mistake. No, I can think of many use-cases where this is useful. For example, what should Siri do if you tell it to "move today's 1 o'clock to the next month" ? Jan 31 + 1m = Feb 28/29 Feb 29 + 1y = Feb 28 SECONDS_PER_DAY is not a constant, because of leap seconds. (Or it is, and shifting between UTC and UT1 causes them to appear. I forgot. It's messy no matter how you slice it.)