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It's not simplifying it though, it's just hiding the complexity in syntactic sugar. I prefer the first way of doing things vastly over the second. Yeah, it's mo

by twwl 10y ago

It's not simplifying it though, it's just hiding the complexity in syntactic sugar. I prefer the first way of doing things vastly over the second. Yeah, it's more code, but it's also more or less "what is actually happening", instead of an euphemism which has to be unpacked.

sidlls 10y ago
At some point that breaks down though doesn't it. I mean from one perspective a conditional in high level code doesn't describe "what is actually happening, either." That's especially true if an optimizing compiler or interpreter mangled it up. From another perspective your argument can be applied to any function call in library code. In either case I don't think your position is that strong.
- twwl 10y ago
  > I mean from one perspective a conditional in high level code doesn't describe "what is actually happening, either." Sure, and from another perspective even the most efficient code does nothing to stop the heat death of the universe and is therefore functionally equivalent to doing anything else or nothing at all. However, that's just splitting hairs. It's not really an argument anyway, but rather a preference.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    The question is more whether it's a reasonable preference to think syntax X is helpful but syntax Y is hiding things. Thinking deeper might show that the issue is actually familiarity, and the two should be rated the same in terms of abstraction.
lmm 10y ago
All programming languages are "euphemisms" in that sense - even C has a lot of layers between it and how modern hardware behaves. It is simplifying if it expresses the important aspects of the result rather than the implementation details of how the machine calculates it.
- twwl 10y ago
  Sure, but when programinng, what the machine does and how long it takes, sometimes does matter. I have to think of all those jQuery examples floating about out there that just do $('#foo') in several places -- sure, it looks simpler than putting it once into a variable, but from the viewpoint of what the computer ends up doing it's utterly ass-backwards.
  - lmm 10y ago
    There's no reason a `.where` should be slower than an explicit loop though. Indeed it should offer more opportunity for future performance improvements, because it doesn't constrain the implementation with irrelevant details - the compiler is free to e.g. make the loop run backwards, or split the collection into chunks and parallelize, if it figures that that would be faster.
RubyPinch 10y ago
> it's just hiding the complexity in syntactic sugar. And that complexity is only written once, instead of multiple times for a single project You can have as many FOR and IF branches that you want, but only if they are all bugless!
- sidlls 10y ago
  Yep. As long as the abstraction is tested and functions as advertised it can be very useful. I'd much rather see a few lambdas in a chain of function calls than blocks of conditionals and loops. Every keyword or bit of code that has to be typed is a potential source of errors, and abstractions of this sort help minimize that.
- twwl 10y ago
  Actually, it's written exactly as often as the original construct. The idea that writing more than 5 letters, or a for loop here and there, is this giant cesspool source of errors is totally alien to me. Of all the ways in which my programming sucks, this was never among them. So thanks for you permission, I'll use it wisely :P
scott_s 10y ago
I disagree, I believe it is properly using abstractions to write simpler, more straight-forward code. I think of syntactic sugar as 1-to-1 replacements. For example, the -> in C and C++ is syntactic sugar for a dereference followed by a field access (ptr->field; (*ptr).field). If it's not a 1-to-1 replacement, then it's more likely to be an actual abstraction.
- twwl 10y ago
  > I disagree, I believe it is properly using abstractions to write simpler, more straight-forward code. Straightforward for some readers, or more straightforward for the CPU/GPU?
continuational 10y ago
The first example is code duplication, and almost every line is suspecious. var listOfGoodFoos = new List<Foo>(); // is listOfGoodFoos a good name? for(var i = 0; i< listOfAllFoos.Count; i++) // is the loop condition correct? { if(listOfAllFoos[i].IsGood) -- the only interesting line is burried in here listOfGoodFoos.Add(listOfAllFoos[i]); -- is i the right index variable? (vs. j, k, n, especially in nested loops) } return listOfGoodFoos; The second example is obviously correct, and highlights the condition. A quote from Tony Hoare comes to mind: There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.

by twwl 10y ago

sidlls 10y ago

At some point that breaks down though doesn't it. I mean from one perspective a conditional in high level code doesn't describe "what is actually happening, either." That's especially true if an optimizing compiler or interpreter mangled it up. From another perspective your argument can be applied to any function call in library code. In either case I don't think your position is that strong.

twwl 10y ago
> I mean from one perspective a conditional in high level code doesn't describe "what is actually happening, either." Sure, and from another perspective even the most efficient code does nothing to stop the heat death of the universe and is therefore functionally equivalent to doing anything else or nothing at all. However, that's just splitting hairs. It's not really an argument anyway, but rather a preference.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  The question is more whether it's a reasonable preference to think syntax X is helpful but syntax Y is hiding things. Thinking deeper might show that the issue is actually familiarity, and the two should be rated the same in terms of abstraction.

lmm 10y ago

All programming languages are "euphemisms" in that sense - even C has a lot of layers between it and how modern hardware behaves. It is simplifying if it expresses the important aspects of the result rather than the implementation details of how the machine calculates it.

twwl 10y ago
Sure, but when programinng, what the machine does and how long it takes, sometimes does matter. I have to think of all those jQuery examples floating about out there that just do $('#foo') in several places -- sure, it looks simpler than putting it once into a variable, but from the viewpoint of what the computer ends up doing it's utterly ass-backwards.
- lmm 10y ago
  There's no reason a `.where` should be slower than an explicit loop though. Indeed it should offer more opportunity for future performance improvements, because it doesn't constrain the implementation with irrelevant details - the compiler is free to e.g. make the loop run backwards, or split the collection into chunks and parallelize, if it figures that that would be faster.

RubyPinch 10y ago

> it's just hiding the complexity in syntactic sugar. And that complexity is only written once, instead of multiple times for a single project You can have as many FOR and IF branches that you want, but only if they are all bugless!

sidlls 10y ago
Yep. As long as the abstraction is tested and functions as advertised it can be very useful. I'd much rather see a few lambdas in a chain of function calls than blocks of conditionals and loops. Every keyword or bit of code that has to be typed is a potential source of errors, and abstractions of this sort help minimize that.
twwl 10y ago
Actually, it's written exactly as often as the original construct. The idea that writing more than 5 letters, or a for loop here and there, is this giant cesspool source of errors is totally alien to me. Of all the ways in which my programming sucks, this was never among them. So thanks for you permission, I'll use it wisely :P

scott_s 10y ago

I disagree, I believe it is properly using abstractions to write simpler, more straight-forward code. I think of syntactic sugar as 1-to-1 replacements. For example, the -> in C and C++ is syntactic sugar for a dereference followed by a field access (ptr->field; (*ptr).field). If it's not a 1-to-1 replacement, then it's more likely to be an actual abstraction.

twwl 10y ago
> I disagree, I believe it is properly using abstractions to write simpler, more straight-forward code. Straightforward for some readers, or more straightforward for the CPU/GPU?

continuational 10y ago

The first example is code duplication, and almost every line is suspecious. var listOfGoodFoos = new List<Foo>(); // is listOfGoodFoos a good name? for(var i = 0; i< listOfAllFoos.Count; i++) // is the loop condition correct? { if(listOfAllFoos[i].IsGood) -- the only interesting line is burried in here listOfGoodFoos.Add(listOfAllFoos[i]); -- is i the right index variable? (vs. j, k, n, especially in nested loops) } return listOfGoodFoos; The second example is obviously correct, and highlights the condition. A quote from Tony Hoare comes to mind: There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.