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0 pointsansin16y ago0 comments

How do you deal with excess verbosity in C#? I know this is a separate argument from the monkey patching issue but for me the conciseness and elegance of the Ruby syntax versus C# is the primary reason to choose Ruby.

0 comments

ankhmoop16y ago

Hopefully a user of C# will chime in -- I've spent very little time with it, and only recently evaluated C#'s extension mechanism for the purpose of comparing it against other language's implementations.

That said, elegant and concise syntax does not require eschewing an internally consistent, fully specified type system -- the two are not incompatible, as demonstrated (subjectively) -- by many existing FP languages. I argue that elegance/conciseness requires either FP language features and advanced type system, or abandonment of rigorous typing.

SamReidHughes_16y ago

Which version of C# are you thinking of?

In C# 3, the verbosity level is much less than in C# 2, where it's slightly less than C# 1.

I don't see where Ruby syntax is particularly more concise than C# 3's.

Well, let me clarify "particularly". I don't find myself feeling like I'm suffering under C#'s syntax, relative to Haskell's. It has about the same amount of syntactic overhead: writing types for method parameters, and when defining data structures. Occasionally I have to explicitly write a type parameter to a function.

ansinOP16y ago

"I don't see where Ruby syntax is particularly more concise than C# 3's."

1.upto(10).each{|x| print x}

I'm curious - how would you print 1 through 10 in C# 3 by comparison?

namelessmike16y ago

C# 3:

  (1).UpTo(10).ForEach(x => Console.WriteLine(x));

Of course, "UpTo" requires first extending int, which is trivial:

  public static class IntExtensions {
      public static List<int> UpTo(this int start, int end) {
          var range = new List<int>();
          for(int i = start; i < end; i++) {
              range.Add(i);
          }
          return range;
      }
  }

1 more reply

ankhmoop16y ago

One way to do this in Scala:

  def print[T] (value:T) = System.out.println(value)
  1.until(10).foreach(x => print x)

This is a fairly uninteresting example, however. Something more interesting would be, for instance, the use of structural types to implement type-checked duck typing.

Scala example:

  // Declare a structural type for any class implementing close()
  type Closable = {def close(): Any}
  
  // Executes the provided function with the given
  // closable generator, creating a new instance which
  // will then be closed on completion. The provided
  // function's value will be returned.
  def withClosable[T, C <: Closable] (c: => C) (f: (C) => T) = {
    val closable = c
    try {
      f(closable)
    } finally {
      closable.close
    }
  }
  
  // Example usage
  def usage = {
    val updated = withClosable(db.openConnection) { conn =>
      conn.update("INSERT INTO example VALUES (...")
    }
    System.out.println("Rows updated: " + updated)
  }

This could be compared with Python's new 'with' syntax.

henning16y ago

Since there's plenty of shitting on Scala going on, I'd like to point out that the Scala equivalent of that is:

    1 to 10 foreach println

Which seems more concise than the equivalent Ruby to me. Feh.

mkramlich16y ago

in Python:

    for i in range(1,11): print i

Python FTW? ;)

erlanger16y ago

I still find this clearer:

  for x in range(1, 10): print x

2 more replies

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ankhmoop16y ago

SamReidHughes_16y ago

Which version of C# are you thinking of?

In C# 3, the verbosity level is much less than in C# 2, where it's slightly less than C# 1.

I don't see where Ruby syntax is particularly more concise than C# 3's.

ansinOP16y ago

"I don't see where Ruby syntax is particularly more concise than C# 3's."

1.upto(10).each{|x| print x}

I'm curious - how would you print 1 through 10 in C# 3 by comparison?

namelessmike16y ago

C# 3:

  (1).UpTo(10).ForEach(x => Console.WriteLine(x));

Of course, "UpTo" requires first extending int, which is trivial:

  public static class IntExtensions {
      public static List<int> UpTo(this int start, int end) {
          var range = new List<int>();
          for(int i = start; i < end; i++) {
              range.Add(i);
          }
          return range;
      }
  }

1 more reply

ankhmoop16y ago

One way to do this in Scala:

  def print[T] (value:T) = System.out.println(value)
  1.until(10).foreach(x => print x)

This is a fairly uninteresting example, however. Something more interesting would be, for instance, the use of structural types to implement type-checked duck typing.

Scala example:

  // Declare a structural type for any class implementing close()
  type Closable = {def close(): Any}
  
  // Executes the provided function with the given
  // closable generator, creating a new instance which
  // will then be closed on completion. The provided
  // function's value will be returned.
  def withClosable[T, C <: Closable] (c: => C) (f: (C) => T) = {
    val closable = c
    try {
      f(closable)
    } finally {
      closable.close
    }
  }
  
  // Example usage
  def usage = {
    val updated = withClosable(db.openConnection) { conn =>
      conn.update("INSERT INTO example VALUES (...")
    }
    System.out.println("Rows updated: " + updated)
  }

This could be compared with Python's new 'with' syntax.

henning16y ago

Since there's plenty of shitting on Scala going on, I'd like to point out that the Scala equivalent of that is:

    1 to 10 foreach println

Which seems more concise than the equivalent Ruby to me. Feh.

mkramlich16y ago

in Python:

    for i in range(1,11): print i

Python FTW? ;)

erlanger16y ago

I still find this clearer:

  for x in range(1, 10): print x

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse