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  • 10 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I’m really surprised to see Java ranked as less-verbose than OCaml.

    Here’s an equivalent code sample in Java 17 vs OCaml:

    Java:

    abstract sealed class Expr permits Value, Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide {
      abstract long eval();
    }
    record Value(long value) extends Expr {
      @Override
      long eval() { return value; }
    }
    record Add(Expr left, Expr right) {   
      @Override
      long eval() { return left.eval() + right.eval(); }
    }
    record Subtract(Expr left, Expr right) {
      @Override
      long eval() { return left.eval() - right.eval(); }
    }
    record Multiply(Expr left, Expr right) {
      @Override
      long eval() { return left.eval() * right.eval(); }
    }
    record Divide(Expr left, Expr right) {
      @Override
      long eval() { return left.eval() / right.eval(); }
    }
    

    OCaml:

    type expr = 
      | Value of int
      | Add of expr * expr
      | Subtract of expr * expr
      | Multiply of expr * expr
      | Divide of expr * expr
    
    let rec eval = function 
      | Value value -> value
      | Add (left, right) -> (eval left) + (eval right)
      | Subtract (left, right) -> (eval left) - (eval right)
      | Multiply (left, right) -> (eval left) * (eval right)
      | Divide (left, right) -> (eval left) / (eval right)
    

    …Java has so much more syntactical overhead than OCaml, and that’s even with recent Java and being pretty aggressive about using boiler-plate reducing sugars like Records. And F# has even less, since it doesn’t require you to use different operators for numerics or do as much manual casting between strings/numerics







  • I don’t get why this is a headline.

    There are two pieces of non-new information from this headline:

    1. People throw away pamphlets that they don’t care about (and also pamphlets that they do care about, but that’s not what’s happening here).
    2. Boebert doesn’t care about school shootings.

    …like…I get that this gives someone their outrage fix for the day, but we’ve learned nothing new from it, and it has no long-term impact. If Boebert took this pamphlet to her house and then ignored it, nothing would be different. She’d still be callous and uncaring towards the victims of school shootings.