an opionin™️ about operator overloading and getters

This commit is contained in:
liquidex 2024-02-12 14:10:16 +01:00
parent 8920d6a064
commit 8331537bdf
2 changed files with 112 additions and 1 deletions

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@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
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- "bad opinion zone" - > "Hotland - Bad Opinion Zone"
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+ log verbosity levels are stupid + log verbosity levels are stupid
@ -159,3 +159,111 @@
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- instead, use an explicit `Option<T>` or `std::optional<T>` or `T?` or ... when you need - instead, use an explicit `Option<T>` or `std::optional<T>` or `T?` or ... when you need
to represent a possibly-invalid case to represent a possibly-invalid case
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+ NaNs should crash the program
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- any time I see a NaN I cry inside knowing how much pain debugging it's gonna be.
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- I'd rather have the program crash and burn at the point a `NaN` is produced rather than have to sift through all the math to find that one division by zero I didn't account for
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- this does influence performance negatively, but it saves *so much* debugging pain and finding out which non deterministic scenario causes a NaN to propagate through the system
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- worst case scenario you pull a Rust and disable those checks on release mode. that *does* work, but I don't like the idea of disabling numeric safety checks on release mode either.
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+ operator overloading is good, but getters and setters are not
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- this one stems from an argument I had today, so I'll write my thoughts for future generations' enjoyment here
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- I'll start by prefacing that I think operator overloading is good [*iff*][def:word/iff] it's implemented in a way that a single operator has only one, well-defined meaning
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- this means `+` really means *addition* and nothing else.
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- this is practically impossible to enforce at a language level - what prevents the standard library authors from overloading `+` to mean string concatenation after all?
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- however we can at least do our best by writing good defaults and coding standards that gently suggest what to do and what not to do
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- for example, allow users to define their own arbitrary operators that are explicitly *not* addition, to incentivize inventing new syntax for these things
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- the way I'd like to do it in [my dream language][def:rokugo/repo] is by a few means
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- `(+)` is defined to be a polymorphic operator which calls into a module implementing the `AddSub` interface, which means you have to implement both addition *and* subtraction for `(+)` to work on your type
```rokugo
let AddSub = interface {
type T
fun add (a : T) (b : T) : T
fun subtract (a : T) (b : T) : T
}
fun (+) (a : let T) (b : T) : T
use AS : AddSub with { T } =
AS.add a b
```
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- note how this operator *does not* have any effects declared on it - this means addition and subtraction must not have any side effects such as I/O
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+ the `(add AND subtract)` rule enforces types like strings to take a different operator, because `(-)` does not have a well-defined meaning on strings
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- is `"foobar" - "bar" == "foo"`?
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- by extension, is `"foofoobarbar" - "bar" == "foofoobar"` or `"foofoobarbar" - "bar" == "foofoo"`?
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- maybe characters are subtracted from the left string one by one? such that `"foobar" - "bar" == "\x04\x0e\xfcbar"` (wtf)
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- so now getters and setters: what's so bad about them?
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- the problem is that given the rule above - *one operator means one thing* - getters and setters completely destroy your assumptions about what `=` might do
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- what's that? you didn't expect `camera.angle_z = 420` to throw because 420 is out of the `[-π/2, π/2]` range? oops!
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- what's that? you didn't expect `camera.angle_z` to return a different value every time you access it? oh, well!
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- at least when it's spelled `camera.angle_z()` it suggests that it might do something weird, like access the thread RNG.
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- not to mention all the infinite recursion annoyance that sometimes happens when implementing them manually
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- this is less of a problem in languages that feature automatic generation of getters and setters - such as Kotlin
```kotlin
var someVariable: String
get
private set
// no infinite recursion to be seen here!
```
but it's still an issue in eg. JavaScript, where one mistake can send your call stack down the spiral:
```javascript
class Example {
#someVariable = "";
get someVariable() { return this.someVariable; } // typo!!!!
set someVariable(value) { this.someVariable = value; } // typo again!!!!!!!!!! dammit!
}
```
and the error is not caught until runtime.
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- it's easy to fix but still an annoyance whenever you write a getter/setter pair.

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@ -17,10 +17,13 @@ description = "a place on the Internet I like to call home"
"treehouse/repo" = "https://github.com/liquidev/treehouse" "treehouse/repo" = "https://github.com/liquidev/treehouse"
"dispatchers/repo" = "https://github.com/liquidev/dispatchers" "dispatchers/repo" = "https://github.com/liquidev/dispatchers"
"abit/repo" = "https://github.com/abyteintime/abit" "abit/repo" = "https://github.com/abyteintime/abit"
"rokugo/repo" = "https://github.com/rokugo-lang/rokugo"
# Blog posts I like to reference # Blog posts I like to reference
"article/function_coloring" = "https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-your-function/" "article/function_coloring" = "https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-your-function/"
"word/iff" = "https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/iff"
[emoji] [emoji]
[pics] [pics]