Side-effect free containers for E

[Tyler Close]

Marcs wrote:
> I observe philosophically, Tyler, that thee and me seem
> destined to take
> opposite sides in a general case,  the case in which there
> is a language
> feature that we consider "bad" (mutable containers in this
> case, inheritance
> the last time) but which are things that conventional
> programmers expect to
> see in their languages. You come down strongly on the side
> of "forbid it", I
> come down strongly on the side of "allow it, but do not
> make it the only
> possible way to solve a problem, go to great lengths to
> make E look and feel
> comfortable, we have enough shock value in E already".

I would phrase it as "do not include it" rather than "forbid it". One
makes me sound like a Stalinist, the other a minimalist. I do strongly
value minimalism in programming. It has been my experience that
malformed, complex features in software have a tendency to snowball
and become cancerous. I wonder if James Gosling realized the full
extent of the problems Java would suffer from the inclusion of C-style
primitive types.

I also observe philosophically, that you don't realize how bad a
particular feature is, and are slow to study why the alternative is so
good, until someone like me says "stop what you're doing". Your
initial response both this time, and last time, was approximately
"leave me alone, I feel just fine".

As I did last time, and as I'll likely do again, I can compromise on
relegating the bad feature far enough away that it hopefully won't
hurt much. I can only do this *after* I have convinced everyone to
relegate it though. I am sure Markm appreciates the tug-of-war that we
represent.

> Taking one of your lines out of context from the last email
> (but not, I hope
> and believe, so much out of context as to be a misrepresentation),
>
> > I think that such surprise would be a good thing.
>
> This is the fundamental place where we disagree. If we want
> to surprise
> people, we can give them Joule. Unfortunately, they will
> throw it back at us
> (sorry, dean).

There are certainly degrees of surprise. Too much, too fast is
certainly a problem.

Also recognize the value of a surprise that quickly lets the surprised
party in on the secret. People are grateful for being told secrets. In
the quoted context, I was suggesting that this surprise is more of
this nature than a "I just don't get it" kind of surprise.

Tyler


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