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Lexical nesting? While I agree with the statement you’re making — that reading code requires you to understand more about what the code means, in that context/r

Lexical nesting? While I agree with the statement you’re making — that reading code requires you to understand more about what the code means, in that context/runtime, I also think the example you’re picking apart reminds me of the dangers of undefined behaviour in C++. If the language specification plus its test cases still has implementation-specific details, then while by all means measure or discover them, but I would both say this is not unique to Swift and is just part of the complexity that is not writing CPU instructions directly that target only one type of CPU design. Maybe I’m taking this too far, but my point I suppose is that I know what was intended by the swift code even if the exact details are optimized out from underneath me by a compiler or language library. Might as well argue that you should have full unit and integration tests for every target platform to ensure the code behaves the way you expect, and even then you’ll still hit platform-specific edge cases, particularly on the wide variety of platforms Linux supports... I do tend to trust Clang, but even it can vary greatly from (hopefully major) version to version.

inopinatus 6y ago
Yes, I'm definitely trying to point out the distinction between reading code and understanding its intention vs understanding implementation mechanics and awareness of the possible alternative behaviours. It's easy to point out that C++ is amongst the worst offenders in that regard, but even a language with a reputation for "programmer happiness" like Ruby (which I absolutely adore) is full of magic, almost every nontrivial expression glossing over a huge pile of conceptual and mechanical object-functional devices that beginners trip over quite routinely (don't even get me started on the thick layer of sorcery that Rails slathers over the top of that). So I'm not actually calling Swift a major offender, but noting generally that I don't there's ever been a language in which the intuition gap between intention and mechanics was small enough to be irrelevant. (something at the back of my mind is now whispering "Scheme", but too quietly to be taken seriously)

inopinatus 6y ago

Yes, I'm definitely trying to point out the distinction between reading code and understanding its intention vs understanding implementation mechanics and awareness of the possible alternative behaviours. It's easy to point out that C++ is amongst the worst offenders in that regard, but even a language with a reputation for "programmer happiness" like Ruby (which I absolutely adore) is full of magic, almost every nontrivial expression glossing over a huge pile of conceptual and mechanical object-functional devices that beginners trip over quite routinely (don't even get me started on the thick layer of sorcery that Rails slathers over the top of that). So I'm not actually calling Swift a major offender, but noting generally that I don't there's ever been a language in which the intuition gap between intention and mechanics was small enough to be irrelevant. (something at the back of my mind is now whispering "Scheme", but too quietly to be taken seriously)