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Stop Using \<> for Generics (soc.me)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/programming_languages@programming.dev
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[–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

Wasting a perfectly good pair of brackets on some random function call and then suffering for it in many other places sounds more like syntactic salt.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    What? I agree with function[T] style generics, and would be willing to change the access syntax to something like container.[index], as the dot makes the difference quite clear. Or do you mean the approach to implementing a container or the way the compiler has to transform it into the set operation/mutable access? I didn't think that was such a problem, and I quite like the way it is done in rust, but that approach may be unavailable to many languages.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    That's still a workaround to try and keep a completely artificial distinction alive.

    Even if I didn't need [] for types, I still wouldn't want "some functions use (), some functions use []" as a language rule.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Some functions also don't have any parentheses, like field access or infix operators.
    Who wants to write

    sqrt(p.x*p.x+p.y*p.y)

    when they could write

    sqrt(p.getX().square().add(p.getY().square()))

    or even

    sqrt(add(square(getX(p)), square(getX(p))))

    We could follow this line of thinking further and arrive at an ugly haskell-like language without pattern matching (because that is an artificial distinction between data in a record and data that can be derived from a record) or operators and barely more enjoyable to write that lambda calculus.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Some functions also don’t have any parentheses, like field access or infix operators.

    You call things the way they were defined. Problem solved.

    I'm kinda confused, because this is the second time now where your attempt at making a counter argument is actively supporting my point. Is this intentional at your part?

    We could follow this line of thinking further ...

    No we don't. If your point relies on Turing-tarpitting the whole discussion ... then you have no point.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    You call things the way they were defined. Problem solved.

    What?

    I’m kinda confused, because this is the second time now where your attempt at making a counter argument is actively supporting my point. Is this intentional at your part?

    We are ultimately arguing about subjective preferences. I favor of certain syntactic sugar because I believe it improves readability while you seem to be arguing for strict consistency above all else.
    So by what metric are we measuring our points?

    No we don’t. If your point relies on Turing-tarpitting the whole discussion … then you have no point.

    I admit, that was hyperbolic, but I don't see what syntax for data manipulation other than functions would be left in your ideal language.

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