In my previous article the mess of virtual functions, I show how easily they introduce bugs and propose language extensions to fix it. Several comments
Virtual functions, though generally a blessing, have a defect-prone dark side. No language, that I know of, provides a way to encode when the base
“Reference counting is slower than garbage collection”, a claim often made in the discussion of memory management. I heard it again recently when discussing Leaf;
Every day millions of programmers require the length of a string. Despite this there is no universal definition of what string.length actually represents. It changes
In the world of parametric programming our languages often seem quite varied and unique. At the core however are two primary approaches, let’s call them
A new technology I’m trying has a curious domain-specific extension for OpenGL graphics. It introduces a block concept allowing for modular shader code. From a
My previous article, “We don’t need a string type“, caused a bit of stir. Though the feedback is mixed, there is a common theme of
Does ‘return’ always cause a function to return? Surprisingly the answer is “no”. Indeed there are situations in which ‘break’ may not always break from
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
Below I’ve tried to catalog some of the typical uses of references in programming. My aim is to clarify the role references play in a