In Ben’s post, he questions whether switch statements are cleaner than if-else chains. I contend they are, because they better express the semantics of the code, allow less room for errors, reduce […]
Why switch is better than if-else
Should function arguments be reassignable or mutable?
Working on a defect in Leaf I had a question: should function arguments be reassignable within a function? Are they just like local variables, or should they be treated specially? It would […]
Do we need 3, or just 2 error types?
Error handling is hard, and it’s made harder by a rich error hierarchy. Programs that successfully handle errors tend to have only a couple of generic handlers. Code that catches specific types […]
The meta-field dilemma: `a.size` or `size(a)`
I can’t decide whether a.size or size(a) is more correct when getting the length of an array. While writing Leaf I have a recurrent feeling that perhaps a.size is wrong. What is […]
Why don’t we have runtime virtual dispatching?
Virtual functions are a great feature, but they have a rather severe limitation. They can only be implemented by extending the definition of all classes involved. A lot of operations on classes […]
Defects allowed by imprecise access modifiers
I recently fixed a defect that I felt the compiler could have caught. Some initialization code was not being run as I was calling a protected function instead of the correct public […]
Adding proxies to C#: A simple proposition
C# prefers composition to inheritance yet lacks any concise composition syntax. This is unfortunate. While I have nothing against composition, I really don’t like the redundancy of manually forwarding methods. Here I […]
1/2 Should Not Equal Zero
There’s something wrong when a language allows 1/2 to equal 0. It’s easy to understand why this happens, and perhaps it’s even easy to forgive the limitations of C. Nonetheless it’s irksome […]
What is a System Language?
Not all languages are made with the same purpose in mind. When it comes to designing a new language like Leaf, it’s important to choose what type of language it will be. […]
The syntax of a conditional
Conditionals are a key construct in programming: from the simple if statement, to loops and switches, and even to dynamic mapping. The essence of program flow is defined by its conditions and […]
Can the Ideal language allow custom operators?
![[+[a][*[b][c]]]](https://mortoray.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/syntax_tree_a.png?w=72&h=80&crop=1)
While working on Cloverleaf I came upon a problem of parsing custom operators. I would like to say that a language would allow custom infix operators, to be perfectly flexible and adaptable. […]
The Ideal Language has “goto”
“goto”: the demonized programming construct. This little expression allows you to jump to somewhere else in the code while skipping the expressions in between. Opponents say it leads to spaghetti code and […]
The Ideal Lanuage has a way to format strings
Ultimately any program must communicate with the outside world. Be it showing the user data or sending a text based protocol, the need to format character data is ever present. All languages […]
The ideal language must be automatically typed
A bane of programming is repeating code and dealing with a myriad of types. The natural response to type overload is to limit the number of types. This runs counter to the […]
