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 suggested an alternate solution with the “non-virtual […]
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 class should be called. This leads to […]
“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; somebody took issue with my arguments against […]
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 between languages, and quite often doesn’t return […]
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 templates and generics. In this article I’ll […]
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 language standpoint I was uncertain what to […]
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 a string being a useful feature. After […]
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