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If you find that shocking you would probably drop dead at seeing what Lisp programmers get up to with macros :) Language flexibility doesn't obscure the readab

by mantap 6y ago

If you find that shocking you would probably drop dead at seeing what Lisp programmers get up to with macros :) Language flexibility doesn't obscure the readability of code. It enhances it. In a flexible language, unclear code is always programmer error, and programmer error is fixable. In an inflexible language, a lack of clarity can sometimes be unavoidable (e.g. java programmers forced to shoehorn everything into classes)

gridlockd 6y ago
> If you find that shocking you would probably drop dead at seeing what Lisp programmers get up to with macros :) I don't find it shocking, I think it's a sign of immaturity. Been there, done that. > Language flexibility doesn't obscure the readability of code. It enhances it. Given a language without any sorts of constraints, any program can and will be written in any conceivable style. In design - not just programming language design - constraints are generally a good thing. > In a flexible language, unclear code is always programmer error, and programmer error is fixable. Virtually all errors are fixable in principle. In practice, there's a budget. Your clever and elegant but utterly idiosyncratic abstractions are costing me money in terms of getting people onboarded. > In an inflexible language, a lack of clarity can sometimes be unavoidable (e.g. java programmers forced to shoehorn everything into classes) This is not a bad trade-off at all. A flexible language invites architecture astronauts to re-invent the concept of classes or modules over and over in slightly different ways. That's Javascript until ES6 and we're still suffering from it.
- smlckz 6y ago
  >> In design - not just programming language design - constraints are generally a good thing. The best example of that in programming language design I have seen is the V programming language. (https://vlang.io https://vlang.io) No global variables, no null/undefined/nil/None/... V is the only language I know in which variable shadowing is an error. (Do you know any other language with this feature/constraint?) And then I remember the handling of ''var''s in js and hoisting etc. ... sigh!
  - kazinator 6y ago
    > Do you know any other language with this feature/constraint gcc -Werror=shadow Demo: $ gcc -Werror=shadow -x c - void foo(int x) { { int x; } } [Ctrl-D][Enter] <stdin>: In function ‘foo’: <stdin>:1:25: error: declaration of ‘x’ shadows a parameter [-Werror=shadow] <stdin>:1:14: note: shadowed declaration is here cc1: some warnings being treated as errors
    - smlckz 6y ago
      Ah! Good old C. I did not dare to open the gcc man page, now I think I will look at it. For that constraint, one have to pass an option. I want to know if any language (other than V) which has this as default.

by mantap 6y ago

gridlockd 6y ago

> If you find that shocking you would probably drop dead at seeing what Lisp programmers get up to with macros :) I don't find it shocking, I think it's a sign of immaturity. Been there, done that. > Language flexibility doesn't obscure the readability of code. It enhances it. Given a language without any sorts of constraints, any program can and will be written in any conceivable style. In design - not just programming language design - constraints are generally a good thing. > In a flexible language, unclear code is always programmer error, and programmer error is fixable. Virtually all errors are fixable in principle. In practice, there's a budget. Your clever and elegant but utterly idiosyncratic abstractions are costing me money in terms of getting people onboarded. > In an inflexible language, a lack of clarity can sometimes be unavoidable (e.g. java programmers forced to shoehorn everything into classes) This is not a bad trade-off at all. A flexible language invites architecture astronauts to re-invent the concept of classes or modules over and over in slightly different ways. That's Javascript until ES6 and we're still suffering from it.

smlckz 6y ago
>> In design - not just programming language design - constraints are generally a good thing. The best example of that in programming language design I have seen is the V programming language. (https://vlang.io https://vlang.io) No global variables, no null/undefined/nil/None/... V is the only language I know in which variable shadowing is an error. (Do you know any other language with this feature/constraint?) And then I remember the handling of ''var''s in js and hoisting etc. ... sigh!
- kazinator 6y ago
  > Do you know any other language with this feature/constraint gcc -Werror=shadow Demo: $ gcc -Werror=shadow -x c - void foo(int x) { { int x; } } [Ctrl-D][Enter] <stdin>: In function ‘foo’: <stdin>:1:25: error: declaration of ‘x’ shadows a parameter [-Werror=shadow] <stdin>:1:14: note: shadowed declaration is here cc1: some warnings being treated as errors
  - smlckz 6y ago
    Ah! Good old C. I did not dare to open the gcc man page, now I think I will look at it. For that constraint, one have to pass an option. I want to know if any language (other than V) which has this as default.