chromatic

77 ms·

721.
by chromatic 16y ago
It seems that somehow languages don't seem to have a lot of influence over what we might call architecture. My instinct suggests instead that languages differ as to the standard deviation of quality of code written in them.
722.
by chromatic 16y ago
I'm not going to defend Perl 5's dereferencing syntax for container operations. Perl 6 changed that for a very good reason. I could give you examples of Ruby's and Python's inconsistency in their use of parentheses, as sometimes they gro
723.
by chromatic 16y ago
How to make an array of arrays in Perl 5: @aoa = ( [ 1, 2, 3 ], [ 4, 5, 6 ] ); How to make a list of lists in Python: lol = [ [ 1, 2, 3 ], [ 4, 5, 6 ] ] How to access the second element of the second array in Perl 5:
724.
by chromatic 16y ago
If you put a list in a list in Perl, don't you have to specifically dereference the sublist when accessing it? You mean "array" instead of "list", but yes. Are there languages which don't require some special syntax for accessing nested
725.
by chromatic 16y ago
Perl 6 is not meant to interoperate directly with Perl 5. Indeed it is.
726.
by chromatic 16y ago
Lists that cannot contain other lists are not reasonable in a high level language. Perl has supported arrays of arrays since 1994. Pointers are not reasonable in a high level language. Perl has never supported pointers. Explicit functi
727.
by chromatic 16y ago
I didn't skip the basics of the language. perlfaq4 explains the difference between arrays and lists in Perl in plain language. One is a variable. The other is a value. The rest is operator precedence, grouping, and context. If you don'
728.
by chromatic 16y ago
Here's your problem: if you skip learning the basics of the language -- if you assume that the fundamental behavior of a new language is the same as other languages you know -- you will suffer constant friction and confusion. Lists and arra
729.
by chromatic 16y ago
There are better alternatives that don't require you to spend time learning .... That's a silly argument. Do you know of any language where beginners don't have to learn between language primitives to create complex data structures, for
730.
by chromatic 16y ago
The problem with this kind of analogy is that a builder starts with a set of well-defined plans drawn up by some architect or engineer and then executes the house to those specs. I've worked in construction, and a handful of my good frien
731.
by chromatic 17y ago
Unless you manage to pull every novice, dabbler, and new developer into the community and teach those best practices from the start, you won't solve the problem on a large scale. Programming -- especially the realm of informal, ad hoc prog
732.
by chromatic 17y ago
Our biggest lack right now is of documentation for the compiler tools. I hope to address that in the next few months.
733.
by chromatic 17y ago
I haven't seen any real project (or any significant open-source project other than Parrot / Perl 6 itself) that's based on Perl 6. And it was started when? 10 years ago? That sounds a bit like the No True Scotsman fallacy. (What makes a
734.
by chromatic 17y ago
The sort of company that would restrict the original source language of applications in a developer agreement doesn't strike me as the sort of company that would laugh and applaud the linguistic cleverness necessary to justify adhering to t
735.
by chromatic 17y ago
Just because Perl's object model from the late 90's was written in C, doesn't damn C to the unspeakable depths. It's more accurate to say that "Just because Larry borrowed Perl 5's object model from Python doesn't mean that...." Yet ther
736.
by chromatic 17y ago
If a test fails, it means the module doesn't work on your machine.... ... or, in many cases, the test is wrong in some fashion. This pushes the responsibility to the person running the test to report the failure and the distribution main
737.
by chromatic 17y ago
[It's] fascinating that it's only Mono and de Icaza that are constantly under attack. Perhaps that's because Sun didn't sue TomTom but Microsoft did.
738.
by chromatic 17y ago
Ruby 7, perhaps. Ruby would have to adopt a module import system, multidispatch, a better object system, generics, optional typing, macros, and something resembling grammars to come close to what you can use in Perl 6 right now .
739.
by chromatic 17y ago
People compared Perl to Lisp once, briefly, when it was one of the few dynamic languages, but they don't anymore. They should; Perl 5 compares quite well and Perl 6 fares even better (of the nine fundamental features of a Lisp, lacking on
740.
by chromatic 17y ago
Is it sour grapes to complain that on multiple occasions that Google recruiters have contacted me unsolicited? That they've told me that "A Googler recommended you for an open position?" That they couldn't identify the person or the posit
741.
by chromatic 17y ago
I came away with the impression that he didn't study other languages in order to improve Perl.... That's an unfortunate impression. I've worked with Larry for several years, and he's most assuredly a polyglot, as are many of the other Pe
742.
by chromatic 17y ago
even non-programmers can understand this Isn't that the Python fallacy? (Take away the curly braces, anyhow.) Programming is a lot more than syntax. How many non-programmers do you know who understand the semantics of mutable assignment
743.
by chromatic 17y ago
Well, which is it? It's both. A Language-with-a-capital-L is the libraries it includes, the libraries it allows, and the libraries it makes unnecessary.
744.
by chromatic 17y ago
That's only a nice feature until you pull out the Decorator or Adapter patterns to get around some class marked `final` in a library somewhere you can't modify and for which you have to appease the type system because classes do not imply i
745.
by chromatic 17y ago
> ... few people with a hundred outfits would go out and buy a hundred-and-first even if it was really cheap, because they already have all they want. Aren't you assuming rationality from economic actors? Some people really enjoy sho
746.
by chromatic 17y ago
30% for the distributor seems high, especially compared to the editors. I'd rather see 20% distributor, 30% editor / producer, 50% author. For physical copies, the numbers are much different, especially because initial costs are higher.
747.
by chromatic 17y ago
The lack of punctuation characters makes this a DSL and not bog-standard Ruby code? > ... instead of creating DSL people usually implement some kind of config file format instead. or just use XML. Writing a grammar or a parser means you
748.
by chromatic 17y ago
> Blocks are also an extremely powerful tool when it comes to building DSLs... I can't read this as anything more insightful than functions are also an extremely powerful tool when it comes to building APIs . I first used Ruby in 20
749.
by chromatic 17y ago
> I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible to construct an especially pathological bit of perl that couldn't be lexically analyzed without running the program. Yes and no. It's trivial to construct a pathological Perl 5 program wh
750.
by chromatic 17y ago
The original Perl 6 announcement occurred a few months after the Python 3000 announcement.

More ›