Some people consider header files an advantage: It is claimed that it enables/enforces/allows separation of interface and implementation — but usually, this is not the case. Header files are full of implementation details (for example member variables of a class have to be specified in the header, even though they’re not part of the public … Read more
Arrays can implement interfaces (Cloneable and java.io.Serializable). So why not Iterable? I guess Iterable forces adding an iterator method, and arrays don’t implement methods. char[] doesn’t even override toString. Anyway, arrays of references should be considered less than ideal – use Lists. As dfa comments, Arrays.asList will do the conversion for you, explicitly. (Having said … Read more
Via wikipedia: Early versions of Java and C# did not include generics (a.k.a. parametric polymorphism). In such a setting, making arrays invariant rules out useful polymorphic programs. For example, consider writing a function to shuffle an array, or a function that tests two arrays for equality using the Object.equals method on the elements. The implementation … Read more
Static methods are not instantiated as such, they’re just available without an object reference. A call to a static method is done through the class name, not through an object reference, and the Intermediate Language (IL) code to call it will call the abstract method through the name of the class that defined it, not … Read more
Cannibalized from another post of mine, here’s more than you ever wanted to know about this. Before I start, here’s the most important thing to keep in mind about Javascript, and to repeat to yourself when it doesn’t make sense. Javascript does not have classes (ES6 class is syntactic sugar). If something looks like a … Read more
What blocks Ruby, Python to get Javascript V8 speed? Nothing. Well, okay: money. (And time, people, resources, but if you have money, you can buy those.) V8 has a team of brilliant, highly-specialized, highly-experienced (and thus highly-paid) engineers working on it, that have decades of experience (I’m talking individually – collectively it’s more like centuries) in … Read more
Contrary to what others are saying, overloading by return type is possible and is done by some modern languages. The usual objection is that in code like int func(); string func(); int main() { func(); } you can’t tell which func() is being called. This can be resolved in a few ways: Have a predictable … Read more
I know that this answer is 3 years late but I really think the current answers do not provide enough information about how prototypal inheritance is better than classical inheritance. First let’s see the most common arguments JavaScript programmers state in defence of prototypal inheritance (I’m taking these arguments from the current pool of answers): … Read more
Dim originally (in BASIC) stood for Dimension, as it was used to define the dimensions of an array. (The original implementation of BASIC was Dartmouth BASIC, which descended from FORTRAN, where DIMENSION is spelled out.) Nowadays, Dim is used to define any variable, not just arrays, so its meaning is not intuitive anymore.
EDIT: Indeed there was a patch which included sign() in math, but it wasn’t accepted, because they didn’t agree on what it should return in all the edge cases (+/-0, +/-nan, etc) So they decided to implement only copysign, which (although more verbose) can be used to delegate to the end user the desired behavior … Read more