Comments on: Implications of Easy http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2005/10/16/implications-of-easy/ Robert Fischer and Brian Hurt on Punditry, Programming Languages, and Other Religious Issues Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:56:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Candide http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2005/10/16/implications-of-easy/comment-page-1/#comment-21 Candide Mon, 17 Oct 2005 00:58:54 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/?p=32#comment-21 My bad -- you certainly deserve the responsibility, and you're right: because of OCaml, we're both better programmers. On the other hand, it's a kind of Plato's Cave issue: we see the light, and we try to share that, but it's frustrating because what we're doing seems "awkward" and "overcomplicated" to everyone else. The most common data structure I'm using these days is a lazy map: I just put in the parameters as an object, and the map resolves itself to the right answer. The Jakarta Commons Collection package is really nice for this (see the LazyMap class), and is greatly powerful when combined with the WeakHashMap class in the core of the language ("It's cached -- oh, is it gone? Here's another one."). The real danger is that you can get into some abusive object creation with any kind of nested results. The other thing that's difficult is concepts like: "I'll test using some function, and do some standard processing while it's true." I just did this the other day. These plugable hunks of code normally get handled in an object maner by extending the class or (for the bad programmer) copy-and-paste, but that's actually pretty awkward, and makes refactoring difficult. My bad — you certainly deserve the responsibility, and you’re right: because of OCaml, we’re both better programmers. On the other hand, it’s a kind of Plato’s Cave issue: we see the light, and we try to share that, but it’s frustrating because what we’re doing seems “awkward” and “overcomplicated” to everyone else.

The most common data structure I’m using these days is a lazy map: I just put in the parameters as an object, and the map resolves itself to the right answer. The Jakarta Commons Collection package is really nice for this (see the LazyMap class), and is greatly powerful when combined with the WeakHashMap class in the core of the language (”It’s cached — oh, is it gone? Here’s another one.”). The real danger is that you can get into some abusive object creation with any kind of nested results.

The other thing that’s difficult is concepts like: “I’ll test using some function, and do some standard processing while it’s true.” I just did this the other day. These plugable hunks of code normally get handled in an object maner by extending the class or (for the bad programmer) copy-and-paste, but that’s actually pretty awkward, and makes refactoring difficult.

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