3 ms·

I know this opinion will not be received well, but I'm really sorry this extended to things like semicolons, snake_case, and the overloading of the term vector

by skohan 6y ago

I know this opinion will not be received well, but I'm really sorry this extended to things like semicolons, snake_case, and the overloading of the term vector to refer to variable length arrays. I'm a big fan of many of the decisions made in Rust, but those are things which I wish we could have let die in the systems programming language of the last decades.

steveklabnik 6y ago
It's cool. I strongly prefer those things. That's why no single language will ever rule them all.
- skohan 6y ago
  To each his own, but out of curiosity what do you like about using the term Vec for dynamically-sized arrays? To me it just seems that it's an inaccurate usage of a term with a precise mathematical meaning (what is a vector of strings exactly?), and as somebody who works with linear algebra a lot in code, it's a frequent point of consternation to have this built into two of the most relevant languages for achieving high performance.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > what is a vector of strings exactly? You can have a vector of integers, a vector of real-numbers, why do you think a vector of strings doesn't make any sense? Strings can be given a well-defined ordering. You can think about strings as a points along a string-line, if you want to. For example - Java often names packages using co-ordinates (vectors) in an n-dimensional string space. Seems to make sense to me?
    - skohan 6y ago
      Maybe in some technical way this is correct, but when I'm pushing a string onto a vector of strings, I'm not thinking about conceptually adding a dimension to my vector in string space. And how would you compute the cross product of <"foo", "bar", "baz"> and <"apple", "orange", "banana"> exactly?
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > And how would you compute the cross product of <"foo", "bar", "baz"> and <"apple", "orange", "banana"> exactly? How would you compute the cross product of <NaN, NaN, NaN> and <NaN, NaN, NaN>? Some vectors don't have a useful result for cross product, even if they contain 'numbers' and even if you can get some kind of result out. Same with dot product of a string. Doesn't make much sense... so probably don't do it.
        skohan 6y ago
        > even if they contain 'numbers' Vectors don't 'contain' numbers, a vector is a multidimensional value. The fact that a C++ vector is conceptually a container for values more than anything else is a reason why 'vector' is a poor name for this component.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        Yes they contain a number for each dimension. Not sure what you think the point of debating individual words like this? What practical problems do you think there are?
        skohan 6y ago
        You're the one arguing from the extremely strained logic that because ordering rules exist for strings, this somehow means that C++ vectors have anything to do with mathematical vectors in the mind of the average programmer. The practical problem is, when you do a lot of work with linear algebra, you would really like to have the term vector to use for its canonical mathematical meaning rather than having it reserved for a data structure which is not suitable for that purpose.
      - a1369209993 6y ago
        > And how would you compute the cross product of <"foo", "bar", "baz"> and <"apple", "orange", "banana"> exactly? Cross product isn't a well-defined operation. The wedge product[0] would be <a,b,c>~<x,y,z>=<<ay-bx,az-cx,bz-cy>>, assuming I didn't get the signs wrong again. That would require scalar multiplication and subtraction of strings, though, neither of which are generally well-defined. If you substitute in string multiplication (ie concatentation) and addition of negatives (alternation and reversal, the latter of which is only vaguely justified by anticommutativity of multiplication), you get: << /fooorange|elpparab/ , /foobanana|elppazab/ , /barbanana|egnarozab/ >> which frankly sounds to me like a pretty good argument that vectors of strings make no sense and shouldn't be supported, but maybe someone working on parsing algebras could come up a more useful interpretation. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_product http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_product Edit: FWIW, wedge product of NaN makes perfect sense: <NaN,NaN,NaN> ~ <NaN,NaN,NaN> = <<NaN,NaN,NaN>>.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Meaning is inherently contextual, so different things meaning different things in different contexts is the norm, not the exception. Do I get upset that a "string" isn't made of "thread"s? It is true that mathematics is closer to programming than tailoring is, but you can't escape this issue. So I don't get particularly worked up about it. (This context is why this matters too; "vector" as a term for this is established, just like the linear algebra term is established.) (I do like to joke about getting worked up about this though, but I pick on String, which should be StrBuf, instead of vectors.)
    - skohan 6y ago
      So I generally agree with your point, and I'm not trying to say this is some giant issue which makes Rust and C++ unusable - on the contrary I think it's a minor annoyance at worst when trying to carve out a naming scheme for my own components. But for the sake of internet pedantry, you seem to be saying that calling it vector is acceptable because it's established, not that there are any inherent advantages to this right? Because I would argue that we can and should take the opportunity to turn the page on imprecise terms of art which only exist for historical reasons. Even looking at Rust, I'm very glad that char|short|int|long has been replaced with i8|i16|i32|i64 even if the former are terms of art which everyone can understand.
      - steveklabnik 6y ago
        I am at least saying something similar to what you're saying. The inherent advantage is familiarity. You may not consider that inherent. That's okay too :) Please excuse my WIP CSS, but I wrote a longer bit about this over at https://steveklabnik.com/writing/the-language-strangeness-budget https://steveklabnik.com/writing/the-language-strangeness-bu... . I think that, for languages that intend to be adopted broadly, you have to choose carefully where you diverge from existing practice. Sometimes, you have to change, after all, that's how progress even happens in the first place! And sometimes, you're forced to change, because you don't truly have an analogous situation.
        skohan 6y ago

by skohan 6y ago

steveklabnik 6y ago

It's cool. I strongly prefer those things. That's why no single language will ever rule them all.

skohan 6y ago
To each his own, but out of curiosity what do you like about using the term Vec for dynamically-sized arrays? To me it just seems that it's an inaccurate usage of a term with a precise mathematical meaning (what is a vector of strings exactly?), and as somebody who works with linear algebra a lot in code, it's a frequent point of consternation to have this built into two of the most relevant languages for achieving high performance.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > what is a vector of strings exactly? You can have a vector of integers, a vector of real-numbers, why do you think a vector of strings doesn't make any sense? Strings can be given a well-defined ordering. You can think about strings as a points along a string-line, if you want to. For example - Java often names packages using co-ordinates (vectors) in an n-dimensional string space. Seems to make sense to me?
  - skohan 6y ago
    Maybe in some technical way this is correct, but when I'm pushing a string onto a vector of strings, I'm not thinking about conceptually adding a dimension to my vector in string space. And how would you compute the cross product of <"foo", "bar", "baz"> and <"apple", "orange", "banana"> exactly?
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > And how would you compute the cross product of <"foo", "bar", "baz"> and <"apple", "orange", "banana"> exactly? How would you compute the cross product of <NaN, NaN, NaN> and <NaN, NaN, NaN>? Some vectors don't have a useful result for cross product, even if they contain 'numbers' and even if you can get some kind of result out. Same with dot product of a string. Doesn't make much sense... so probably don't do it.
      - skohan 6y ago
        > even if they contain 'numbers' Vectors don't 'contain' numbers, a vector is a multidimensional value. The fact that a C++ vector is conceptually a container for values more than anything else is a reason why 'vector' is a poor name for this component.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        Yes they contain a number for each dimension. Not sure what you think the point of debating individual words like this? What practical problems do you think there are?
        skohan 6y ago
        You're the one arguing from the extremely strained logic that because ordering rules exist for strings, this somehow means that C++ vectors have anything to do with mathematical vectors in the mind of the average programmer. The practical problem is, when you do a lot of work with linear algebra, you would really like to have the term vector to use for its canonical mathematical meaning rather than having it reserved for a data structure which is not suitable for that purpose.
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      > And how would you compute the cross product of <"foo", "bar", "baz"> and <"apple", "orange", "banana"> exactly? Cross product isn't a well-defined operation. The wedge product[0] would be <a,b,c>~<x,y,z>=<<ay-bx,az-cx,bz-cy>>, assuming I didn't get the signs wrong again. That would require scalar multiplication and subtraction of strings, though, neither of which are generally well-defined. If you substitute in string multiplication (ie concatentation) and addition of negatives (alternation and reversal, the latter of which is only vaguely justified by anticommutativity of multiplication), you get: << /fooorange|elpparab/ , /foobanana|elppazab/ , /barbanana|egnarozab/ >> which frankly sounds to me like a pretty good argument that vectors of strings make no sense and shouldn't be supported, but maybe someone working on parsing algebras could come up a more useful interpretation. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_product http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_product Edit: FWIW, wedge product of NaN makes perfect sense: <NaN,NaN,NaN> ~ <NaN,NaN,NaN> = <<NaN,NaN,NaN>>.
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  Meaning is inherently contextual, so different things meaning different things in different contexts is the norm, not the exception. Do I get upset that a "string" isn't made of "thread"s? It is true that mathematics is closer to programming than tailoring is, but you can't escape this issue. So I don't get particularly worked up about it. (This context is why this matters too; "vector" as a term for this is established, just like the linear algebra term is established.) (I do like to joke about getting worked up about this though, but I pick on String, which should be StrBuf, instead of vectors.)
  - skohan 6y ago
    So I generally agree with your point, and I'm not trying to say this is some giant issue which makes Rust and C++ unusable - on the contrary I think it's a minor annoyance at worst when trying to carve out a naming scheme for my own components. But for the sake of internet pedantry, you seem to be saying that calling it vector is acceptable because it's established, not that there are any inherent advantages to this right? Because I would argue that we can and should take the opportunity to turn the page on imprecise terms of art which only exist for historical reasons. Even looking at Rust, I'm very glad that char|short|int|long has been replaced with i8|i16|i32|i64 even if the former are terms of art which everyone can understand.
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      I am at least saying something similar to what you're saying. The inherent advantage is familiarity. You may not consider that inherent. That's okay too :) Please excuse my WIP CSS, but I wrote a longer bit about this over at https://steveklabnik.com/writing/the-language-strangeness-budget https://steveklabnik.com/writing/the-language-strangeness-bu... . I think that, for languages that intend to be adopted broadly, you have to choose carefully where you diverge from existing practice. Sometimes, you have to change, after all, that's how progress even happens in the first place! And sometimes, you're forced to change, because you don't truly have an analogous situation.
      - skohan 6y ago