3 ms·

I don't want to rehash this here, but this is actually a less obvious choice than it can seem like at first blush! Erasure and primitive specialization have a v

I don't want to rehash this here, but this is actually a less obvious choice than it can seem like at first blush! Erasure and primitive specialization have a very deep set of considerations and tradeoffs that touch a ton of language features. There's a ton written about it, value-types generally, monomorphization, etc.

Thiez 4y ago
What a nice and condescending reply. Do you believe that anyone who knows about these considerations and tradeoffs would automatically conclude that type erasure is superior, so someone who disagrees with it is obviously uninformed? Since you didn't actually give any actual argument apart from "I disagree and I am smart" I don't think we have anything concrete to argue about, so let's stick to my original point: would you agree that in C# it is much easier to do "the right thing" when putting primitives in a datastructure such as a list, map, or set, because C# has value types and does not use type erasure for its containers, thereby preventing both a lot of overhead and the need for specialized container types for various (combinations of) primitives?
- kjeetgill 4y ago
  Hey, sorry if it came across as condescending, I really didn't mean it to be. All I wanted to say was I don't think the choice is obvious and leave a few googleable buzzwords for anyone interested to go read up more on it. I don't think I took a stance pro/anti erasure other than to say I think it's way more complicated a topic than it might seem (maybe not to you, but likly to others!) and it's worth reading up on. AND I didn't want to dig up old HN comments/posts to confirm what I'd read about it, so I was necessarily vague. Edit 1: For instance, I vaguely recall that Scala head trouble porting to C# because of erasure related stuff. But I'm not genius enough to remember the details so I didn't get into it. Edit 2: So I dug one up: https://cr.openjdk.java.net/~briangoetz/valhalla/erasure.html https://cr.openjdk.java.net/~briangoetz/valhalla/erasure.htm... And posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33171832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33171832 Edit 3: Other good conversations on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18679684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18679684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051594 Again, my only stance is that it's a surprisingly deep topic — Not making any claims!

Thiez 4y ago

What a nice and condescending reply. Do you believe that anyone who knows about these considerations and tradeoffs would automatically conclude that type erasure is superior, so someone who disagrees with it is obviously uninformed? Since you didn't actually give any actual argument apart from "I disagree and I am smart" I don't think we have anything concrete to argue about, so let's stick to my original point: would you agree that in C# it is much easier to do "the right thing" when putting primitives in a datastructure such as a list, map, or set, because C# has value types and does not use type erasure for its containers, thereby preventing both a lot of overhead and the need for specialized container types for various (combinations of) primitives?

kjeetgill 4y ago
Hey, sorry if it came across as condescending, I really didn't mean it to be. All I wanted to say was I don't think the choice is obvious and leave a few googleable buzzwords for anyone interested to go read up more on it. I don't think I took a stance pro/anti erasure other than to say I think it's way more complicated a topic than it might seem (maybe not to you, but likly to others!) and it's worth reading up on. AND I didn't want to dig up old HN comments/posts to confirm what I'd read about it, so I was necessarily vague. Edit 1: For instance, I vaguely recall that Scala head trouble porting to C# because of erasure related stuff. But I'm not genius enough to remember the details so I didn't get into it. Edit 2: So I dug one up: https://cr.openjdk.java.net/~briangoetz/valhalla/erasure.html https://cr.openjdk.java.net/~briangoetz/valhalla/erasure.htm... And posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33171832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33171832 Edit 3: Other good conversations on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18679684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18679684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051594 Again, my only stance is that it's a surprisingly deep topic — Not making any claims!