“Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.” • Hacker News Board

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#301

Post by filoeleven » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:16 AM UTC

enneff wrote: post #133

reikonomusha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite being a joke, I know it's the "Ha Ha Only Serious" [0] sort. I can't help but think this is severely biased by the trends of "enterprise software," where you eventually "give up", and clock your 9–5 writing if+for making a fine living, but erroneously pass that off as a mature, Jedi-like way of thinking about programming, like the meme suggests. (And, consequently, you spend no less time debugging hairy, nest…

What this really means that once you get to a certain level of experience and seniority the actual code you write in the small is pretty much irrelevant. What matters is the overall architecture of what you’re building: the data structures and APIs. The challenge becomes about working together as a team, and with other teams within your ecosystem. Sophisticated language constructs don’t actually help you solve those…

I view map/filter as better abstractions than for loops, and do not consider them to be sophisticated language constructs. They correlate with descriptions of a program’s goals much more naturally than for loops do: get the name of each user, remove everyone under 21, only show accounts with positive balances, etc. Reduce is more arguable, but I think it also applies: show the total amount of money in all of this user’s accounts.

“If” however seems pretty fundamental.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#302

Post by cmeacham98 » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #229

elviejo wrote: post #164

"First a punch is just a punch, Then a punch is not only a punch, And finally a punch is just a punch" (heard from Bruce Lee) Basically it means that in the beginning we punch like we can.. then a martial arts student learns the proper and different ways to punch.. so a punch is no longer just a punch... Is a lot of instructions.. Then to sheer practice and repetition the right way to punch becomes second nature.. so…

That’s what disappoints me in modern Java. There is practically no ifs. It makes it inaccessible to beginners on the project, and the streams are about twice as slow… just because devs think they are more clever if they pile 7 “.map()” to transform a list. list.stream().filter(Objects::nonNull).map(User::getUsername).filter(Objects::nonNull).filter(name -> name.contains(searchString)).map(name -> “We have found your…

I don't write java, but assuming it has a null coalescing operator you can likely do all that in a single map in a way that is (in my opinion) cleaner and easier to read than both of your examples.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#303

Post by GhettoComputers » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:18 AM UTC

okareaman wrote: post #293

GhettoComputers wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25788317 Seems like we lose a lot of good technology and progress for random reasons, like the “ram” of society is finite.

Yes, it's a good talk. Think of all the extremely talented internal combustion engine engineers that will be obsolete in 20 - 30 years.

Obsolete or repurposed? People studying physics like string theory may be completely wrong, but their skills can still be useful.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#304

Post by erik_seaberg » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC

filoeleven wrote: post #278

BobbyJo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything else is only there for the monkeys pressing the keys.

And the monkeys reading the code to see what it does. I don’t recall who it was exactly but some early computing heavyweight, maybe Von Neumann, thought that any language which requires a compiler was a waste of resources.

Computers used to be so expensive that it made more sense to hire a “programmer” to convert an “analyst’s” flowchart into machine code using only a keypunch.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#305

Post by AtlasBarfed » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:32 AM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #229

elviejo wrote: post #164

"First a punch is just a punch, Then a punch is not only a punch, And finally a punch is just a punch" (heard from Bruce Lee) Basically it means that in the beginning we punch like we can.. then a martial arts student learns the proper and different ways to punch.. so a punch is no longer just a punch... Is a lot of instructions.. Then to sheer practice and repetition the right way to punch becomes second nature.. so…

That’s what disappoints me in modern Java. There is practically no ifs. It makes it inaccessible to beginners on the project, and the streams are about twice as slow… just because devs think they are more clever if they pile 7 “.map()” to transform a list. list.stream().filter(Objects::nonNull).map(User::getUsername).filter(Objects::nonNull).filter(name -> name.contains(searchString)).map(name -> “We have found your…

Groovy is still far better and more readable. And with @CompileStatic it is basically the same speed.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#306

Post by H8crilA » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:32 AM UTC

Just to be clear: a language with only if() conditionals and for() loops with known number of iterations (so for instance all for-each loops) isn't actually Turing complete. This is called primitive recursion, and an easy to prove example of what it cannot process is computing the Ackerman function.

Also, you can easily see that something is fishy because all such code must terminate (where's the halting problem here?)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_recursive_function

Otherwise I completely agree with the aphorism.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#307

Post by filoeleven » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

nayuki wrote: post #288

filoeleven wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a failure of Java’s language design, not a failure of the functional/declarative paradigm. Your for loop can do all kinds of damage to the list, and you have to read it all to find out what it does. Saner languages make the functional version more expressive.p: return first(users.filter(u => contains(u.name, searchString)) I’m not saying JS is a sane language; it has an anemic standard library without a robust…

JavaScript's "first()" is https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... .

Same caveat applies here as my other sibling comment. I shouldn’t have to do null checks before calling functions.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#308

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

doubled112 wrote: post #296

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when the expert thinks twice they don't do something stupid?

That's not how I interpreted it at all.

[deleted]

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#309

Post by FpUser » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

filoeleven wrote: post #275

laurent92 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what disappoints me in modern Java. There is practically no ifs. It makes it inaccessible to beginners on the project, and the streams are about twice as slow… just because devs think they are more clever if they pile 7 “.map()” to transform a list. list.stream().filter(Objects::nonNull).map(User::getUsername).filter(Objects::nonNull).filter(name -> name.contains(searchString)).map(name -> “We have found your…

That’s a failure of Java’s language design, not a failure of the functional/declarative paradigm. Your for loop can do all kinds of damage to the list, and you have to read it all to find out what it does. Saner languages make the functional version more expressive.p: return first(users.filter(u => contains(u.name, searchString)) I’m not saying JS is a sane language; it has an anemic standard library without a robust…

>"Your for loop can do all kinds of damage ..."

So can programming in general

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#310

Post by filoeleven » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #282

filoeleven wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a failure of Java’s language design, not a failure of the functional/declarative paradigm. Your for loop can do all kinds of damage to the list, and you have to read it all to find out what it does. Saner languages make the functional version more expressive.p: return first(users.filter(u => contains(u.name, searchString)) I’m not saying JS is a sane language; it has an anemic standard library without a robust…

>and you have to read it all to find out what it does. Which isn't a problem, because as long as its all loops'n branches, the code is easy to understand.

Hard disagree. For loops do not have guarantees about in-place mutation; that’s why they require a full read. Anything that starts with a map/filter is guaranteed to only apply to the thing that it is assigned to. That’s more than worth its weight in grey hairs.

EDIT: “full read” includes “everywhere else this array is used, which can have far-reaching consequences if it was passed into the containing function by reference.”