Community Digest |
Top new questions this week: |
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Why does JavaScript use autoboxing?JavaScript has a handful of primitive types such as strings and numbers. However, when doing something fancy, it often wraps these types inside temporary objects in order to use object methods, a ...
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Is there something better than async in order to avoid dead or unused processing times in single thread?I recently read about PHP's true async RFC. The initial real life "picture" (unrelated to PHP or sync processing) that I imagined was a waiter in a restaurant. He/She/It works async, taking ...
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Greatest hits from previous weeks: |
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Are there good reasons to minimize the number of keywords in a language?Are there good reasons to attempt to keep the number of keywords/reserved tokens in a language to a minimum? Such as by repurposing existing keywords for new syntax instead of adding new ones. Related:...
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What language design features made Lisp useful for Artificial Intelligence research?Lisp is often claimed to be one of the "[original] favored programming language[s] for artificial intelligence (AI) research" (source, additional reference, cross-site related question that ...
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How expressive of a type system is too expressive, for the average programmer?The advantages of an expressive type system cannot be denied. The usual definition applies - how much valid behaviour a chosen system allows, while also preventing invalid behaviour. In terms of "...
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Why would a language have a concept of undefined behavior instead of raising an error?Certain constructs or conditions in programming just are not allowed. Languages such as Java or Swift handle these by raising an error when encountered. C and C++ on the other hand say 'Anything could ...
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What are the drawbacks of allowing implicit boolean/integer conversions?Some languages (C, C++, JavaScript, Python) allow one to use integers as booleans and vice versa: int x; if (x) // Equivalent to: x != 0 y(); Or: ...
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Preserving backwards compatibility when adding new keywordsInspired by Why do keywords have to be reserved words? Suppose that you're the BDFL of a programming language. Version 1 of the language becomes decently popular. A few years later, you decide to ...
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Return statements vs passing a pointerReturning a value from a function like int add(int,int); allows for a subset of the functionality of simply passing a pointer ...
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