which one do you prefer? python with C# or java?

[Albert van der Horst]

In article <7xwr3fjff8.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
Paul Rubin  <no.email at nospam.invalid> wrote:
>Matej Cepl <mcepl at redhat.com> writes:
>> The point is that you are never interested in learning *a language*,
>> everybody who has at least some touch with programming can learn most
>> languages in one session in the afternoon.
>
>Really, that's only if the new language is pretty much the same as the
>old ones, in which case you haven't really learned much of anything.
>Languages that use interesting new concepts are challenges in their own
>right.
>
>Here is an interesting exercise for statically typed languages,
>unsuitable for Python but not too hard in Haskell:
>
>http://blog.tmorris.net/understanding-practical-api-design-static-typing-and-functional-programming/

When I'm satisfied with a program, it has this ethereal property that
if the problem is slightly altered, the program is only slightly
altered. Case in point:going to incorporate the extra 8 register from
64 bit pentium into a pre-existing 32 bit Pentium assembler.
(Which is a in fact a somewhat large messy change that would
trigger a rewrite in most assemblers.)

I much doubt if e.g. the whowonordraw gives a compile time error
on a non-finished board, that the program can be robust against
a small change of the rules. Say strikes going through the lower
left square are not counted as a win.
It is sooo bloody artifical. A normal requirement would be an
API that gives on any tic-tac-toe board one of:
Iwin, youwin, draw, not-finished.

Then there are static typed languages like Forth where the programmer
is the judge whether there is a type error, and type errors are
not generated by the compiler.

A much more natural api is where a board is an object.
You can send a move message -> accepted or nor
You can send an inspect message -> won lost draw or not-finished.

I can make that totally robust without storing lost or draw
information using the type system.

He requires that on several calls, if the data is wrong, you get
a compile time error. How could that be a reasonable demand from
a language like Python where the call can be made interpretively?

Of course it is an exercise. But I think that it went this way:
1. solve it in Haskell
2. require incidental and non-useful features of the solution
to work in other languages the same way.

If he is bashing Scrum, I'm bashing staic typing.

>
>It doesn't require the use of any libraries, standards, style, or
>culture.  I can tell you as a fairly strong Python programemr who got
>interested in Haskell a few years ago, it took me much longer than an
>afternoon to get to the point of being able to solve a problem like the
>above.  It required absorbing new concepts that Python simply does not
>contain.  But it gave me the ability to do things I couldn't do before.
>That's a main reason studying new languages is challenging and
>worthwhile.

I give you that. Mastering a functional language is a real
step, but I don't think this tic-tac-toe exercise will entice me to
do that.
Maybe the solutions to http://projecteuler.net that are published
in Haskell sometimes condensing a few pages of my sequential code in
a few lines, will inspire me to take up Haskell.

Groetjes Albert

--
-- 
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert at spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst