Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Microsoft is changing the programming world

programmingzen.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–79 of 79 posts

Re: How Microsoft is changing the programming world

#71

Post by sid0 »

georgieporgie wrote: post #70
rbanffy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly taste, really. You can do almost everything you do in one environment on the other. What I dislike most in Windows is the standard APIs and datatypes. Not only they "feel" more complicated, the naming and casing conventions are plain ugly. I will dig up some examples from my WinCE days. It's gotten a lot worse since I started writing most of my code in Python (2001-). I can't look at C code for Windows an…

Yeah, that seems to be what most of the Windows bashing comes down to: taste. Not that there's anything wrong with subjective preference, I just usually see it stated as if it were simply a known fact. If it's any comfort, I find most Unix/Linux APIs I've looked at to be painful, and long for (most) Windows API functions. :-) One thing Unixy people seem to hate is "Hungarian" naming of variables. Granted, like most t…

Yeah, that seems to be what most of the Windows bashing comes down to: taste.

Yes, while I don't particularly like Win32, GNU make is objectively horrible.

Re: How Microsoft is changing the programming world

#72

Post by mwerty »

bpyne wrote: post #44
gaius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'd say that MS-only developers ignore Linux because it's not directly relevant to their day-to-day work. They just want to do their jobs with the tools they know then go home (and there's nothing wrong with that). On the flipside, Linux-only developers actively avoid Windows on ideological grounds. The latter is where this article is coming from. You can't really say a LAMP developer is any more cutting edge t…

"Simon Peyton-Jones is another heavy hitter at MSR." If F# does well, I have to wonder if a sanctioned dialect of Haskell for the CLR is in the making. The only thing giving me doubt is that I can't think up a business case for it. OCaml has an audience in the financial world which gives MS a business case for F#. Having F# already, what would an H# give them?

> OCaml has an audience in the financial world

Who besides Jane St?

Re: How Microsoft is changing the programming world

#73

Post by cabalamat »

georgieporgie wrote: post #65
cabalamat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what you're saying is that if I don't know the recent trends in functional languages, I don't care about programming? No, I'm saying that if you're not interested in different programming paradigms, you're not interested in programming. You don't have to know about "recent trends" in functional programming (it's not actually that recent -- Lisp has been around forever, and the Haskell standard is over a decade o…

> I'm saying that if you're not interested in different programming paradigms, you're not interested in programming. I'm going to go ahead and call B.S. on that. At my most interested, I've had no interest (nor awareness) in functional programming. Now I'm aware of it, but still not particularly interested in it. What I am interested in is working with a platform that has better foundations (e.g. .Net vs raw C++). >…

> > I'm saying that if you're not interested in different programming paradigms, you're not interested in programming.

> I'm going to go ahead and call B.S. on that. At my most interested, I've had no interest (nor awareness) in functional programming.

FP is just one programming paradigm. Other important concepts in programming include: object orientation, stack based languages, model-view-controller, macros, templates/generics, structured programming, lazy evaluation / dataflow-based programming, interrupts, cooperative v. coercive multitasking, memory protection, pipes between processes, serialisation, event loops, modularity / seperation of concerns, common data structures such as lists, arrays, binary trees, hash tables, etc.

My contention is that a programmer who doesn't have a large number of concepts such as these is likely to build bad software when confronted with a large, complex software project.

> You seem to be saying that functional programming can be used to greatly reduce code. But if my employer doesn't allow it, and my teammates aren't experienced in it, what good is it to me?

Functional programming doesn't just mean esoterica like Haskell. In the wider sense of the term, it means anywhere where you're passing a function as a parameter or the return value form another function. You can do it in such mainstream languages as Python, Ruby, C#, and JavaScript. They're even adding closures to Java.

I'd be very surprised if your employer has a blanket edict against higher-order functions, because employers are either clueful or clueless -- clueful ones will allow it, clueless ones won't know what it is.

Re: How Microsoft is changing the programming world

#74

Post by rbanffy »

sid0 wrote: post #71
georgieporgie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that seems to be what most of the Windows bashing comes down to: taste. Not that there's anything wrong with subjective preference, I just usually see it stated as if it were simply a known fact. If it's any comfort, I find most Unix/Linux APIs I've looked at to be painful, and long for (most) Windows API functions. :-) One thing Unixy people seem to hate is "Hungarian" naming of variables. Granted, like most t…

Yeah, that seems to be what most of the Windows bashing comes down to: taste. Yes, while I don't particularly like Win32, GNU make is objectively horrible.

> GNU make is objectively horrible.

It is, but it's simple, clear and readily understandable. It will never surprise you.

I have come to dislike surprises that happen during build ;-)

Re: How Microsoft is changing the programming world

#75

Post by gaius »

mwerty wrote: post #72
bpyne wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Simon Peyton-Jones is another heavy hitter at MSR." If F# does well, I have to wonder if a sanctioned dialect of Haskell for the CLR is in the making. The only thing giving me doubt is that I can't think up a business case for it. OCaml has an audience in the financial world which gives MS a business case for F#. Having F# already, what would an H# give them?

> OCaml has an audience in the financial world Who besides Jane St?

Job ads would suggest CSFB.

Re: How Microsoft is changing the programming world

#76

Post by rbanffy »

georgieporgie wrote: post #70
rbanffy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly taste, really. You can do almost everything you do in one environment on the other. What I dislike most in Windows is the standard APIs and datatypes. Not only they "feel" more complicated, the naming and casing conventions are plain ugly. I will dig up some examples from my WinCE days. It's gotten a lot worse since I started writing most of my code in Python (2001-). I can't look at C code for Windows an…

Yeah, that seems to be what most of the Windows bashing comes down to: taste. Not that there's anything wrong with subjective preference, I just usually see it stated as if it were simply a known fact. If it's any comfort, I find most Unix/Linux APIs I've looked at to be painful, and long for (most) Windows API functions. :-) One thing Unixy people seem to hate is "Hungarian" naming of variables. Granted, like most t…

> I've always really liked it.

Every time I have to parse Hungarian notation, I feel compelled to change my name and renounce my ancestry ;-)

But it's a matter of taste. I also find it weird to start method names with uppercase in C#. Again, taste.

Re: How Microsoft is changing the programming world

#77

Post by georgieporgie »

cabalamat wrote: post #73
georgieporgie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm saying that if you're not interested in different programming paradigms, you're not interested in programming. I'm going to go ahead and call B.S. on that. At my most interested, I've had no interest (nor awareness) in functional programming. Now I'm aware of it, but still not particularly interested in it. What I am interested in is working with a platform that has better foundations (e.g. .Net vs raw C++). >…

> > I'm saying that if you're not interested in different programming paradigms, you're not interested in programming. > I'm going to go ahead and call B.S. on that. At my most interested, I've had no interest (nor awareness) in functional programming. FP is just one programming paradigm. Other important concepts in programming include: object orientation, stack based languages, model-view-controller, macros, templat…

> FP is just one programming paradigm. ...

Right, but this article was bashing people for not knowing, specifically, about functional programming. My entire point has been that it is ridiculous and petty to do this. Let's say you know A, B, C, and E. Aha! What about D, I ask. You're clearly an idiot, I can't believe you don't know about D. And here you get F, which is related to D, and you act like it's something new to the world. Pssh!

See?

> I'd be very surprised if your employer has a blanket edict against higher-order functions

Er, every employer I've ever had has been very strict about the introduction of any new technology, library, language, etc. This is because every employer I've had is concerned with maximizing productivity and shipping product. Tinkering with new stuff on the job can be rather dangerous to one's employment.

Again, I'm not promoting ignorance, what I'm doing is speaking out against this alpha-nerd judgment of others.

Re: How Microsoft is changing the programming world

#78

Post by bpyne »

mwerty wrote: post #72
bpyne wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Simon Peyton-Jones is another heavy hitter at MSR." If F# does well, I have to wonder if a sanctioned dialect of Haskell for the CLR is in the making. The only thing giving me doubt is that I can't think up a business case for it. OCaml has an audience in the financial world which gives MS a business case for F#. Having F# already, what would an H# give them?

> OCaml has an audience in the financial world Who besides Jane St?

It's not a huge audience but Jane Street and CSFB make for an important audience that can introduce functional programming languages into the financial world. Couple it with MS's marketing and end-to-end IDE/infrastructure pieces and it becomes a disruptive technology.

Re: How Microsoft is changing the programming world

#79

Post by cabalamat »

georgieporgie wrote: post #77
cabalamat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > I'm saying that if you're not interested in different programming paradigms, you're not interested in programming. > I'm going to go ahead and call B.S. on that. At my most interested, I've had no interest (nor awareness) in functional programming. FP is just one programming paradigm. Other important concepts in programming include: object orientation, stack based languages, model-view-controller, macros, templat…

> FP is just one programming paradigm. ... Right, but this article was bashing people for not knowing, specifically, about functional programming. My entire point has been that it is ridiculous and petty to do this. Let's say you know A, B, C, and E. Aha! What about D, I ask. You're clearly an idiot, I can't believe you don't know about D. And here you get F, which is related to D, and you act like it's something new…

> Er, every employer I've ever had has been very strict about the introduction of any new technology, library, language, etc.

Your experience differs from mine. For me, while I've often been told what language to write code in, I've never been told what features of the language I am or am not allowed to use. Regarding libraries, I've always used relevant open source ones, paying attention to licensing issues as appropriate.

Post reply on HN