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As someone who likes C header files, I enjoy manually maintaining them. Designing the interface separately from the implementation feels good to me, and a well

by panic 2y ago

As someone who likes C header files, I enjoy manually maintaining them. Designing the interface separately from the implementation feels good to me, and a well-structured .h file is nicer to read than any auto-generated docs I've encountered.

chii 2y ago
> Designing the interface separately from the implementation feels good to me would you make the same argument for java then?
- otteromkram 2y ago
  Absolutely not.
  - tpoacher 2y ago
    you don't like java interfaces?
- marginalia_nu 2y ago
  Even as a java programmer, I think this is a bad take. Java doesn't force separation of implementation and interface, and java interfaces also have a lot of weird stuff going on with them. Java also has too many tools for this. You both have class/interface, but also public/private. I honestly think C does it better than Java.
  - chii 2y ago
    > java interfaces also have a lot of weird stuff going on with them. really? I know java pretty well, and there aint nothing weird there. C uses conventions to produce an "interface" (ala a header file with declarations). Java uses compilers to produce an interface, which i do really like. You can ship that interface without an implementation, and only at runtime load an implementation for example. > You both have class/interface, but also public/private. And these are all othorgonal concerns. A private interface is for the internal organization of code, as opposed to a public one (for external consumption). That's why you might have a private interface.
    - marginalia_nu 2y ago
      > C uses conventions to produce an "interface" (ala a header file with declarations). Java uses compilers to produce an interface, which i do really like. You can ship that interface without an implementation, and only at runtime load an implementation for example. You can do this in C as well, since it has separate code declarations and definitions. You conventionally put the declarations in the header and definitions in the source file. A C program can link against declarations alone, and the implementations can be loaded later using dynamic linking. > And these are all othorgonal concerns. A private interface is for the internal organization of code, as opposed to a public one (for external consumption). That's why you might have a private interface. But these are profoundly overlapping concerns. Interfaces also hide the internal organization of the code, and on top of this, you also have project jigzaw's modules (that absolutely nobody uses), but which also caters toward separating private implementations from public interfaces.
- layer8 2y ago
  It’s important to not conflate Java’s interface keyword with the more general notion of “interface” as in “API”. In Java, you generally don’t and can’t have a source-level representation of the API without it being interspersed with its implementation. (You could imagine such a representation, i.e. remove all method bodies and (package-)private elements, but the result wouldn’t be valid Java. IDEs arguably could and should provide such a source-level view, e.g. via code folding, but I don’t know any that do.)
xigoi 2y ago
The problem is that you have to write the interface not only separately grom the implementation, but together with the implementation as well, which leads to duplication of information;
- bluGill 2y ago
  So? Yes you need some duplicatin but it forces you to put information useful to api users where they won't have to wade through pages of information not of interest to them. eventually they may need to read the source but a lot of common questions are answered by the header and so the small cost to make them is worth it. of course javadoc can answer the same questions but then you have to run it.

by panic 2y ago

chii 2y ago

> Designing the interface separately from the implementation feels good to me would you make the same argument for java then?

otteromkram 2y ago
Absolutely not.
- tpoacher 2y ago
  you don't like java interfaces?
marginalia_nu 2y ago
Even as a java programmer, I think this is a bad take. Java doesn't force separation of implementation and interface, and java interfaces also have a lot of weird stuff going on with them. Java also has too many tools for this. You both have class/interface, but also public/private. I honestly think C does it better than Java.
- chii 2y ago
  > java interfaces also have a lot of weird stuff going on with them. really? I know java pretty well, and there aint nothing weird there. C uses conventions to produce an "interface" (ala a header file with declarations). Java uses compilers to produce an interface, which i do really like. You can ship that interface without an implementation, and only at runtime load an implementation for example. > You both have class/interface, but also public/private. And these are all othorgonal concerns. A private interface is for the internal organization of code, as opposed to a public one (for external consumption). That's why you might have a private interface.
  - marginalia_nu 2y ago
    > C uses conventions to produce an "interface" (ala a header file with declarations). Java uses compilers to produce an interface, which i do really like. You can ship that interface without an implementation, and only at runtime load an implementation for example. You can do this in C as well, since it has separate code declarations and definitions. You conventionally put the declarations in the header and definitions in the source file. A C program can link against declarations alone, and the implementations can be loaded later using dynamic linking. > And these are all othorgonal concerns. A private interface is for the internal organization of code, as opposed to a public one (for external consumption). That's why you might have a private interface. But these are profoundly overlapping concerns. Interfaces also hide the internal organization of the code, and on top of this, you also have project jigzaw's modules (that absolutely nobody uses), but which also caters toward separating private implementations from public interfaces.
layer8 2y ago
It’s important to not conflate Java’s interface keyword with the more general notion of “interface” as in “API”. In Java, you generally don’t and can’t have a source-level representation of the API without it being interspersed with its implementation. (You could imagine such a representation, i.e. remove all method bodies and (package-)private elements, but the result wouldn’t be valid Java. IDEs arguably could and should provide such a source-level view, e.g. via code folding, but I don’t know any that do.)

xigoi 2y ago

The problem is that you have to write the interface not only separately grom the implementation, but together with the implementation as well, which leads to duplication of information;

bluGill 2y ago
So? Yes you need some duplicatin but it forces you to put information useful to api users where they won't have to wade through pages of information not of interest to them. eventually they may need to read the source but a lot of common questions are answered by the header and so the small cost to make them is worth it. of course javadoc can answer the same questions but then you have to run it.