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What would those names be in this example?
In a real application meaningful names are nearly always possible, eg: const pi = 3.1415926 const 2pi = 2 * pi const circumference = 2pi * radius
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In a real application meaningful names are nearly always possible, eg: const pi = 3.1415926 const 2pi = 2 * pi const circumference = 2pi * radius
Calling tau 2pi is the most cursed thing I've seen all day. Appropriate for Halloween.
Yeah, I also wish it was the default. But it's a little too verbose to just sprinkle on every variable in C++. Alas. Rust gets this right, but I'm stuck with C++ at work.
> But it's a little too verbose to just sprinkle on every variable in C++ It's worth it, though. Every variable that isn't mutated should be const. Every parameter not mutated should be const, and so should every method that doesn't mutate any fields. The mutable keyword should be banned.
Dumb question from a primarily Python programmer who mostly writes (sometimes lengthy) scripts: if you have a function doing multiple API calls - say, to different AWS endpoints with boto3 - would you be expected to have a different variable for each response? Or do you delete the variable after it’s handled, so the next one is “new?”
I think renaming an old variable is a common and sensible way to free a resource in python. If there are no valid names for a resource it will be garbage collected. Which is different in languages like C++ with manual memory management. John Carmack is a C++ programmer apparently that still has a lot to learn in python.
After a 2 year Clojure stint I find it very hard to explain the clarity that comes with immutability for programmers used to trigger effects with a mutation. I think it may be one of those things you have to see in order to understand.
That said, utopias are not always a great idea. Making all your code functional might be philosophically satisfying, but sometimes there are good reasons to break the rules.
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ML superfan here. I don’t mind lisp simplicity either. Erlang is too alien for me, but maybe once I was used to it.
If you start programming in it though, syntax only matters during the first day. Familiarity comes very fast, and if you do five programming exercises, maybe one a day, 'implement a hash map', 'make a small game', etc. you will have no problems whatsoever once the week is done. If you have a course where one day you're supposed to do Haskell and another Erlang, and another LISP, and another Prolog, and there's only o…
After a 2 year Clojure stint I find it very hard to explain the clarity that comes with immutability for programmers used to trigger effects with a mutation. I think it may be one of those things you have to see in order to understand.
I think the explanation is: When you mutate variables it implicitly creates an ordering dependency - later uses of the variable rely on previous mutations. However, this is an implicit dependency that isn't modeled by the language so reordering won't cause any errors. With a very basic concrete example: x = 7 x = x + 3 x = x / 2 Vs x = 7 x1 = x + 3 x2 = x1 / 2 Reordering the first will have no error, but you'll get t…
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_single-assignment_form
This would require coming up with an order of magnitude more variable names which is just unnecessary cognitive load.
An order of magnitude? That sounds like pretty outrageous hyperbole. A variable getting reassigned 10 times sounds extremely rare, the average in my experience has to be less than 1 reassignment. I think the approach requires coming up with maybe 10% more names. Usually there are good, obvious names for intermediate calculations in my experience. I'm open though - what kinds of things are you doing that require reass…