Programming Languages

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This is the current Lemmy equivalent of https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/.

The content and rules are the same here as they are over there. Taken directly from the /r/ProgrammingLanguages overview:

This community is dedicated to the theory, design and implementation of programming languages.

Be nice to each other. Flame wars and rants are not welcomed. Please also put some effort into your post.

This isn't the right place to ask questions such as "What language should I use for X", "what language should I learn", and "what's your favorite language". Such questions should be posted in /c/learn_programming or /c/programming.

This is the right place for posts like the following:

"Check out this new language I've been working on!"
"Here's a blog post on how I implemented static type checking into this compiler"
"I want to write a compiler, where do I start?"
"How does the Java compiler work? How does it handle forward declarations/imports/targeting multiple platforms/?"
"How should I test my compiler? How are other compilers and interpreters like gcc, Java, and python tested?"
"What are the pros/cons of ?"
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"Confused about the semantics of this language"
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armchair_progamer

If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it? (buttondown.email)

submitted 6 months ago by armchair_progamer to c/programming_languages

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This essay says that inheritance is harmful and if possible you should "ban inheritance completely". You see these arguments a lot, as well as things like "prefer composition to inheritance". A lot of these arguments argue that in practice inheritance has problems. But they don't preclude inheritance working in another context, maybe with a better language syntax. And it doesn't explain why inheritance became so popular in the first place. I want to explore what's fundamentally challenging about inheritance and why we all use it anyway.

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[–] onlinepersona 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (19 children)

🙄 people who blindly say "inheritance is bad" or "composition over inheritance" and mean "no inheritance" are just like followers of religion. Always repeating the same stuff without thinking and being completely convinced they are right. Nigh everything has a place and a valid usecase and just because you don't see it doesn't mean nobody else does.

Edit: Also "sum types" and "algebraic data types" are horrible names. Pretty much the equivalent of "imaginary numbers". What the fuck is a "sum type"? How do you "add" types together? Adding numbers makes sense, it has a real world equivalent. Two balls in a cup, add one ball and you have three balls in a cup. Add color to water and you have colored water. Simple. But types? The fuck?

str | int is a sum type --> does that mean sum types are adding two spaces of possibilities together aka a union of two sets? The wikipedia article is so friggin bad at explaining it to people who aren't in the know.

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[–] RonSijm 1 points 6 months ago

How do you “add” types together? Adding numbers makes sense, it has a real world equivalent. Two balls in a cup, add one ball and you have three balls in a cup. Add color to water and you have colored water. Simple. But types? The fuck?

It makes sense when using some fluent patterns and things like monads. For example:

User user = new User("Bob"); // User Class
UserWithPassword user = new User("Bob").WithPassword("Dylan123"); // UserWithPassword Type

A UserWithPassword type would then be a User object wrapper with some IWithPassword interface

Then you could create extension methods on IWithPassword objects and decorate those objects with password behavior

You can then have sort of polymorphic behavior by combining types together, and have different functionality available depending on which types you've added together

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