What are the traditional sums-and-products data structures he is referring to? In type theory, regular data structures can be described in terms of sums, products and recursive types. This leads to an algebra for describing data structures (and so-called algebraic data types). Such data types are common in statically typed functional languages, such as ML … Read more
The idea is definitely not stupid, especially if executed well. I like coffeescript a lot, but it has it’s approach has downsides as well. Debugging a coffeescript script still requires you read the generated Javascript code, which can be tedious, since you haven’t written it actually yourself. I’ve understood that Jeremy Ashkenas, the creator of … Read more
The CLI/CLR is written in C/C++ and assembly. Almost all of the .NET framework classes are written in C# > compiled to IL, which runs in the CLR. If you crack open a framework library in Reflector, class, you may see an attribute such as [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.InternalCall)] which delegates the call to the CLI.
When not specified, C++ is unmanaged C++, compiled to machine code. In unmanaged C++ you must manage memory allocation manually. Managed C++ is a language invented by Microsoft, that compiles to bytecode run by the .NET Framework. It uses mostly the same syntax as C++ (hence the name) but is compiled in the same way … Read more
It is at worst O(n). Sometimes (and this is language and compiler dependent), it translates to a jump table lookup (for “nice” switches that don’t have too large a case range). Then that is O(1). If the compiler wants to be funky, I can think of ways that the complexity can be implemented to be … Read more
In Objective-C, you call this “class methods”, see here: @interface MyClass : NSObject + (void)aClassMethod; – (void)anInstanceMethod; @end The + is the important thing; you call the method like this: [MyClass aClassMethod];
If you include the parentheses in the definition you can optionally omit them when you call the method. If you omit them in the definition you can’t use them when you call the method. scala> def foo() {} foo: ()Unit scala> def bar {} bar: Unit scala> foo scala> bar() <console>:12: error: Unit does not … Read more
Keywords have a special meaning in a language, and are part of the syntax. Reserved words are words that cannot be used as identifiers (variables, functions, etc.), because they are reserved by the language. In practice most keywords are reserved words and vice versa. But because they’re two different things it may happen that a … Read more
No, you cannot. In Python, all data (classes, methods, functions, etc) defined in C extension modules (including builtins) are immutable. This is because C modules are shared between multiple interpreters in the same process, so monkeypatching them would also affect unrelated interpreters in the same process. (Multiple interpreters in the same process are possible through … Read more
This will change the string containing the file name; let file = “first.docx”; file = file.substr(0, file.lastIndexOf(“.”)) + “.htm”; For situations where there may not be an extension: let pos = file.lastIndexOf(“.”); file = file.substr(0, pos < 0 ? file.length : pos) + “.htm”;