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C Craft: C is the desert island language.

www-cs-students.stanford.edu

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Re: C Craft: C is the desert island language.

#31

Post by jbooth »

mhansen wrote: post #30
jbooth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and congrats, now you have to hire people who already know what a foo is. The great thing about ConcurrentHashMap isn't writing it, it's reading it. Even if you're not a Java programmer you know exactly what that is (and FWIW it's world-class on implementation). We could do with some syntactical sugar to make that constructor line a little simpler, but declaring the type and calling a specific constructor, not…

I think the verbosity complaint here isn't about the length of the name, it's about having to repeat the type and generic arguments.

Yeah, repeating the generics is cumbersome and we could do with a better syntactical sugar for that.

Typically, the type's only reapeated if you're assigning to the same exact type as your constructor. In most cases, Map foo = new ConcurrentHashMap is more idiomatic than typing ConcurrentHashMap twice. Although concurrent is a little special because it's an implementation detail that you sometimes want to enforce via types.

Re: C Craft: C is the desert island language.

#32

Post by extension »

jedsmith wrote: post #13
Groxx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There you're largely screwed, but Java is well-known for being extremely verbose, and of course there will be languages that don't have basic features others have had for decades. The closest you can get in Java is to wrap it in a private, internal class. Which also lets you rename some verbose or frequently-combined operations, say: foo.someoneCouldntComeUpWithAShorterName() -> wrapped.succinct() -- or -- foo.store(…

I see your Java, and raise you Objective-C: NSString *thing = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Result: %@", [foo someoneCouldntComeUpWithAShorterNameWithZipcode:08205 name:@"larry" parcels:5]]; NSDictionary *request = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:@"iphoneapp/0.1", @"User-Agent", @"news.ycombinator.com", @"Host", nil]; This isn't to kick off pet language wars, by the way, just to point out that my OCD tic to…

While it can get a bit silly sometimes, I've come to really appreciate the verbosity of Obj-C method calls. Explicit parameter names make them very self-descriptive, and grouping the entire call within brackets makes structure obvious. Compare:

  canvas.drawImage(kittens.subImage(vec2(10,10),vec2(20,20)),vec2(30,30))
vs

  [canvas drawImage:[kittens subImageAt:vec2(10,10) withSize:vec2(20,20)] at:vec2(30,30)]

Re: C Craft: C is the desert island language.

#34

Post by cdavid »

Groxx wrote: post #3

> In my Eiffel days, I was encouraged to write "integer", not "int", "character", not "char", and so on. I believe Java encourages this practice too. Supposedly clarity is maximized. But how can this be if we do the opposite when we speak? Do you say “taxi cab”, or “taximeter cabriolet”? Redundant utterances are tiresome and worse still, obscure the idea being expressed. I see this argument a lot, and they strike me…

I don't think it is an issue of technology (typedef, etc...) as much as an application target issue. Using short names in a language without any kind of namespace support can only work for a certain type of applications and developmenent organization.

C really shines for low-level programming: while something like Linux Kernel is extremely complex, it has relatively simple needs as far as interface goes. The public interface is very small (defined by system calls - I don't know the count, but suffice to say the most trivial python libraries will often have more functions). Same thing can be said for other applications where C has been very successfull for.

But something as fundamental as a lack of any namespace in C really hurts when you need to handle very large applications which cannot be easily split in very well defined components with small interfaces. Complex GUI and browsers come to mind, which is exactly the kind of things where C++ is a well accepted choice.

Re: C Craft: C is the desert island language.

#35

Post by jschrf »

angusgr wrote: post #7

I'm deeply conflicted about this article because I agree with many of its premises. For instance: that C is superior to full-blown C++, that object-oriented programming is no panacea, that simplicity is good. I have serious concerns, however, especially with the first page and the first few chapters. - They support the biases of the myopic programmer who believes that now he or she knows C, they know everything one m…

Solution: C#

Re: C Craft: C is the desert island language.

#36

Post by cabalamat »

chittis wrote: post #5
Groxx wrote: post #3

> In my Eiffel days, I was encouraged to write "integer", not "int", "character", not "char", and so on. I believe Java encourages this practice too. Supposedly clarity is maximized. But how can this be if we do the opposite when we speak? Do you say “taxi cab”, or “taximeter cabriolet”? Redundant utterances are tiresome and worse still, obscure the idea being expressed. I see this argument a lot, and they strike me…

Given that Java doesn't have typedefs how would you reduce the verbosity of : ConcurrentHashMap foo = new ConcurrentHashMap ();

I'd write the code in Python (or indeed any sensible modern language).

   foo = {}

Re: C Craft: C is the desert island language.

#37

Post by angusgr »

nkurz wrote: post #21
angusgr wrote: post #7

I'm deeply conflicted about this article because I agree with many of its premises. For instance: that C is superior to full-blown C++, that object-oriented programming is no panacea, that simplicity is good. I have serious concerns, however, especially with the first page and the first few chapters. - They support the biases of the myopic programmer who believes that now he or she knows C, they know everything one m…

Judging by his blog ( http://benlynn.blogspot.com/ ) it looks like he has considerable affection for many languages beyond C. And I think you may have misinterpreted his comparison with Fortran: rather than showing how handily C beats Fortran (fish in a barrel), he seems to be saying that even with some C99 improvements, there still are places where Fortran has the advantage (refreshingly heretical). It's definitely…

Yeah, you're right about Fortran, my mistake. I actually skipped that chapter because I've never written Fortran. I did read the other chapters, paying particular attention to languages I've used at least a bit (Haskell, Java, C++ from that list.)

Like I said also, I agree with a lot of the premises. I just think the essay is overly positioned as "C is the best hammer" when a better essay might be "Use the right tool, C is a powerful tool. Here is how to use C like a craftsman, here are some good ways to use C you might not have thought of."

It's definitely not a piece for beginners

Who is it for? (I mean this in the most respectful way possible, I'm actually not sure.)

Re: C Craft: C is the desert island language.

#38

Post by angusgr »

angusgr wrote: post #37
nkurz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by his blog ( http://benlynn.blogspot.com/ ) it looks like he has considerable affection for many languages beyond C. And I think you may have misinterpreted his comparison with Fortran: rather than showing how handily C beats Fortran (fish in a barrel), he seems to be saying that even with some C99 improvements, there still are places where Fortran has the advantage (refreshingly heretical). It's definitely…

Yeah, you're right about Fortran, my mistake. I actually skipped that chapter because I've never written Fortran. I did read the other chapters, paying particular attention to languages I've used at least a bit (Haskell, Java, C++ from that list.) Like I said also, I agree with a lot of the premises. I just think the essay is overly positioned as "C is the best hammer" when a better essay might be "Use the right tool…

Also, I didn't mean to suggest the author is necessarily a myopic programmer who believes that now he or she knows C... - just that the way this essay is positioned, I see it as appealing strongly but superficially to such programmers.

Re: C Craft: C is the desert island language.

#39

Post by leon_ »

Groxx wrote: post #3

> In my Eiffel days, I was encouraged to write "integer", not "int", "character", not "char", and so on. I believe Java encourages this practice too. Supposedly clarity is maximized. But how can this be if we do the opposite when we speak? Do you say “taxi cab”, or “taximeter cabriolet”? Redundant utterances are tiresome and worse still, obscure the idea being expressed. I see this argument a lot, and they strike me…

I don't know for Java (luckily haven't been using it much) but for C I dislike typedefs. I need to know what data I'm working with. A typedef hides that information from me behind a shiny but uninformative name.

Re: C Craft: C is the desert island language.

#40

Post by billforsternz »

Ruudjah wrote: post #33

> Not only is C easy for humans to understand, Is he being funny or serious?

Serious. C is a simple, elegant language. If your natural inclination is towards low level tools without elaborate abstractions built in, then yes it is easy to understand. Easier than the equivalent assembly language for example.
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