2 ms·
is 10 possible combinations of function and call a good thing? it seems odd to me. are other languages like that? having such a large number(?) seems to impl
by andrewcooke 13y ago
is 10 possible combinations of function and call a good thing? it seems odd to me. are other languages like that? having such a large number(?) seems to imply that the language has lots of special cases. which is worrying, isn't it? wouldn't it be better (all other things being equal) to have a smaller number of ways that function calls work?
- gsg 13y agoIt's fine since all the detailed goop is at the implementation level. Programmers need not care. Making a distinction between known and unknown calls in the implementation is not only a good thing, but in a language with first-class functions it is all but inevitable because the performance win is so large. (The majority of calls are known, and known calls can be compiled significantly more efficiently than any general purpose call machinery.)