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At this point I'd like to summon to go-generics defense all the PHP and Javascript developers who assert unwaveringly "Bad language design doesn't cause bad cod

by libria 6y ago

At this point I'd like to summon to go-generics defense all the PHP and Javascript developers who assert unwaveringly "Bad language design doesn't cause bad code; bad programmers cause bad code."

draw_down 6y ago
Boy. You guys always manage to find interesting new ways to hold PHP/JS devs in low regard. I will give you all that.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Counterpoint: languages (and libraries, and frameworks, and platforms) so well-designed that they introduce a "pit of success"[1] such that bad programmers naturally write better code than they would have done otherwise. For example, what if PHP could somehow detect string-concatenation in SQL queries and instantly `die()` with a beginner-friendly error message explaining to use query parameterisation from the very beginning: tens of billions of dollars of PHP SQL injection vulnerabilities simply never would have happened - and people who were already writing database queries with string-concatenation in VB and Java who gave PHP a try would then be forced to learn about the benefits of parameterisation and they'd then take that improved practice back to their VB and Java projects - a significant net worldwide improvement in code-quality! [1]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/falling-into-the-pit-of-success/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/falling-into-the-pit-of-succes... I've been writing in TypeScript for about 5 years now - and I'm in-love with its algebraic type system and whenever I switch back to C#/.NET projects it's made me push the limits of what we can do with .NET's type system just so I can have (or at least emulate as closely as possible) the features of TypeScript's type system. (As for generics - I've wondered "what if every method/function was "generic" insofar as any method's call-site could redefine that method's parameter types and return types? Of course then it comes down to the "structural vs. nominative typing" war... but I'd rather be fighting for a hybrid of the two rather than trying to work-around an poorly-expressive type system.

by libria 6y ago

At this point I'd like to summon to go-generics defense all the PHP and Javascript developers who assert unwaveringly "Bad language design doesn't cause bad code; bad programmers cause bad code."

draw_down 6y ago

Boy. You guys always manage to find interesting new ways to hold PHP/JS devs in low regard. I will give you all that.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

Counterpoint: languages (and libraries, and frameworks, and platforms) so well-designed that they introduce a "pit of success"[1] such that bad programmers naturally write better code than they would have done otherwise. For example, what if PHP could somehow detect string-concatenation in SQL queries and instantly `die()` with a beginner-friendly error message explaining to use query parameterisation from the very beginning: tens of billions of dollars of PHP SQL injection vulnerabilities simply never would have happened - and people who were already writing database queries with string-concatenation in VB and Java who gave PHP a try would then be forced to learn about the benefits of parameterisation and they'd then take that improved practice back to their VB and Java projects - a significant net worldwide improvement in code-quality! [1]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/falling-into-the-pit-of-success/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/falling-into-the-pit-of-succes... I've been writing in TypeScript for about 5 years now - and I'm in-love with its algebraic type system and whenever I switch back to C#/.NET projects it's made me push the limits of what we can do with .NET's type system just so I can have (or at least emulate as closely as possible) the features of TypeScript's type system. (As for generics - I've wondered "what if every method/function was "generic" insofar as any method's call-site could redefine that method's parameter types and return types? Of course then it comes down to the "structural vs. nominative typing" war... but I'd rather be fighting for a hybrid of the two rather than trying to work-around an poorly-expressive type system.