2 ms·

I disagree. The fact that it is slower has no practical impact in the vast majority of cases, and is certainly not nearly as important as readability. So it c

by jsankey 17y ago

I disagree. The fact that it is slower has no practical impact in the vast majority of cases, and is certainly not nearly as important as readability. So it comes down to which is clearer, and I find the functional style - even with the extra ceremony - more clearly conveys the code's intent. No messing around with the how, just show me the what. It's not about showing off, it's about abstraction of extremely common idioms. Pointing this out as unclear for a "Java programmer" is a bit of a red herring I think. Anyone can learn what map/filter/reduce/etc mean in no time at all -- it seems a simple task compared to learning the project-specific abstractions of any codebase.

WilliamLP 17y ago
> Pointing this out as unclear for a "Java programmer" is a bit of a red herring I think. I think it's really not. There's a talk out there, I think by Gosling, about the direction of Java including why lambdas were rejected for Java 7. One reason was actually to prevent the sort of functional code that polarizes people in terms of whether it is seen as beautiful or opaque. (E.g. currying, Y combinators.) Java provides the flexibility to use functional programming through anonymous inner classes, but at considerable pain to the author. The point people miss is that that pain is actually a conscious part of the language design. Anyone can learn about map/filter/reduce, and every programmer needs to for the situations when they are crucial. But on the other hand, the problems with explicit looping are much overstated and I'll admit to emotionally siding on the issue with the creators of Java and Python. I don't think you can ever fully get the "how" out of programming, nor should you try, nor is "what" implicitly superior all the time in all situations.
- jsankey 17y ago
  > The point people miss is that that pain is actually a conscious part of the language design. That may be true, but it doesn't make it the right choice. And AFAIK Gosling himself has always been pro-closures, to remove this pain (see http://blogs.sun.com/jag/entry/closures http://blogs.sun.com/jag/entry/closures). >I'll admit to emotionally siding on the issue with the creators of Java and Python The big difference in Python is that there are "pythonic" alternatives for the really common cases. > nor is "what" implicitly superior all the time in all situations. I agree there is such a thing as too much abstraction, but I really don't think map/filter/etc fall into this category. These operations are so frequent that if you don't abstract the how, you end up repeating it thousands of times in a significant codebase. At that point I think you end up on the wrong side of the fence.

by jsankey 17y ago

WilliamLP 17y ago

> Pointing this out as unclear for a "Java programmer" is a bit of a red herring I think. I think it's really not. There's a talk out there, I think by Gosling, about the direction of Java including why lambdas were rejected for Java 7. One reason was actually to prevent the sort of functional code that polarizes people in terms of whether it is seen as beautiful or opaque. (E.g. currying, Y combinators.) Java provides the flexibility to use functional programming through anonymous inner classes, but at considerable pain to the author. The point people miss is that that pain is actually a conscious part of the language design. Anyone can learn about map/filter/reduce, and every programmer needs to for the situations when they are crucial. But on the other hand, the problems with explicit looping are much overstated and I'll admit to emotionally siding on the issue with the creators of Java and Python. I don't think you can ever fully get the "how" out of programming, nor should you try, nor is "what" implicitly superior all the time in all situations.

jsankey 17y ago
> The point people miss is that that pain is actually a conscious part of the language design. That may be true, but it doesn't make it the right choice. And AFAIK Gosling himself has always been pro-closures, to remove this pain (see http://blogs.sun.com/jag/entry/closures http://blogs.sun.com/jag/entry/closures). >I'll admit to emotionally siding on the issue with the creators of Java and Python The big difference in Python is that there are "pythonic" alternatives for the really common cases. > nor is "what" implicitly superior all the time in all situations. I agree there is such a thing as too much abstraction, but I really don't think map/filter/etc fall into this category. These operations are so frequent that if you don't abstract the how, you end up repeating it thousands of times in a significant codebase. At that point I think you end up on the wrong side of the fence.