4 ms·

I just checked the old Rust classic “ripgrep” on github. In matcher.rs, the enum is used as poor man’s OOP. I saw several match expressions which then call the

by blub 4y ago

I just checked the old Rust classic “ripgrep” on github. In matcher.rs, the enum is used as poor man’s OOP. I saw several match expressions which then call the same function on each matched type. searcher/mod.rs is an error definition. glob.rs contains a sort of policy enum which can be implemented once again with OOP or as a policy template. json.rs usage can be modeled as a single class. core/app.rs is more involved, but can be modeled as a series of structs with a map from enum -> any. Or as am std::variant. Or using OOP. I looked at all instances and didn’t see anything game-changing. It’s a nice syntax and it should have really good performance, but such idioms are way too low-level to change any game.

burntsushi 4y ago
This is a straw man. There is nobody on this Earth claiming that sum types are necessary to solve a problem. Product types aren't necessary either. You could just write everything in Assembly. Or maybe raw bytecode if you want. As should be patently fucking obvious to anyone who has been commenting on a technology web site for as long as you have, sum types are a tool. They are a tool for expressing clearly and concisely the idea that a value can be exactly one of several possible options. That tool then interacts with the rest of the language based on that invariant, sometimes providing things like exhaustiveness checking and pattern matching. Put all this together, and you have a very succinct and very clear way of representing certain kinds of values in a program. Your comment might as well go through ripgrep and talk about how functions aren't needed. "They could have just used goto here and there." > I looked at all instances and didn’t see anything game-changing. It’s a nice syntax and it should have really good performance, but such idioms are way too low-level to change any game. Sum types were game changing to me when I learned about them over a decade ago. Since then, they have been a significant factor in how I think about and structure data in programs. I have zero interest in trying to convince someone like you that you should think it's game changing. That's not the point. Maybe you could do some perspective taking and realize that others might just think differently than you.

by blub 4y ago

burntsushi 4y ago

This is a straw man. There is nobody on this Earth claiming that sum types are necessary to solve a problem. Product types aren't necessary either. You could just write everything in Assembly. Or maybe raw bytecode if you want. As should be patently fucking obvious to anyone who has been commenting on a technology web site for as long as you have, sum types are a tool. They are a tool for expressing clearly and concisely the idea that a value can be exactly one of several possible options. That tool then interacts with the rest of the language based on that invariant, sometimes providing things like exhaustiveness checking and pattern matching. Put all this together, and you have a very succinct and very clear way of representing certain kinds of values in a program. Your comment might as well go through ripgrep and talk about how functions aren't needed. "They could have just used goto here and there." > I looked at all instances and didn’t see anything game-changing. It’s a nice syntax and it should have really good performance, but such idioms are way too low-level to change any game. Sum types were game changing to me when I learned about them over a decade ago. Since then, they have been a significant factor in how I think about and structure data in programs. I have zero interest in trying to convince someone like you that you should think it's game changing. That's not the point. Maybe you could do some perspective taking and realize that others might just think differently than you.