On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 3:21 AM Alex Hall <[email protected]> wrote:
> > It is not a question of right or wrong, better or worse. It is a question
> > of being consistent.
>
> Why would that be the question? Why is consistency more important than
> "better or worse"? How can you make such a bold claim?
>
Inconsistency leads to ridiculous situations where things change from
working to nonworking when you make what should be an insignificant
change. Consider:
// JavaScript
let obj = {
attr: 1,
method: function() {return this.attr;},
}
obj.method() # returns 1
[obj.method][0]() # returns undefined
// PHP, older versions - fortunately fixed
function get_array() {return array(1, 2, 3);}
$arr = get_array(); echo $arr[0]; // Fine
echo get_array()[0]; // Broken until PHP 5.something
# Python
nan = float("nan")
nan == nan # False
[nan] == [nan] # True
Go ahead, explain these differences to a newish programmer of each
language. Explain why these behave differently.
Now would you like to explain why, with strings, you can say s[0],
s[1], s[2] etc, but you can't iterate over it, either with a 'for'
loop or with any other construct that iterates (for instance, you
can't say a,b,c = s because that is done with iteration). Especially,
explain why you can do this with literally every other subscriptable
type in the core language (and most from third-party classes too), and
it's only strings that are bizarre. Oh but they *aren't* bizarre in
older versions, so there'll be code on the internet that works that
way, just don't do it any more.
Have fun explaining that. Consistency *is* valuable.
ChrisA
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