Look and think good things about D

[Chris]

On Friday, 15 November 2013 at 13:13:51 UTC, Ary Borenszweig 
wrote:
> On 11/15/13 10:07 AM, Chris wrote:
>> On Friday, 15 November 2013 at 12:47:21 UTC, bearophile wrote:
>>> Ary Borenszweig:
>>>
>>>> Here's what I was able to do in some minutes:
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> if ARGV.length != 1
>>>> puts "missing argument: n"
>>>> exit 1
>>>> end
>>>>
>>>> n = ARGV[0].to_i
>>>> str = "1"
>>>> buffer = String::Buffer.new(20)
>>>> n.times do
>>>> puts str.length
>>>> str.each_chunk do |digit, count|
>>>>   buffer << '0' + count
>>>>   buffer << digit
>>>> end
>>>> str = buffer.to_s
>>>> buffer.clear
>>>> end
>>>>
>>>> With n=70 it takes about 4.89s. With n=45 it takes about 
>>>> 0.012s.
>>>
>>> This program is much longer in number of tokens to the first D
>>> program. You can write a D program about as fast as this in 
>>> about the
>>> same number of tokens.
>>>
>>> Perhaps I should add an intermediate third version that shows 
>>> code
>>> that's not as extreme as the two versions there. Thank you 
>>> for the
>>> implicit suggestion.
>>>
>>>
>>>> And with Crystal you could do the second version as well, 
>>>> because you
>>>> have access to low level stuff like pointers.
>>>
>>> In Crystal do you have final switches, gotos, etc too?
>>>
>>>
>>>> And also, the language is pretty new so there's still
>>>> a lot of optimizations to be done.
>>>
>>> And LDC2 will improve in the meantime.
>>>
>>>
>>>> I also thought ranges were pretty fast because of their 
>>>> nature.
>>>
>>> It also matters a lot how you use them, this is normal in 
>>> computer
>>> programming.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Why are they slow in this example?
>>>
>>> Just because the first example is not written for speed, I 
>>> didn't even
>>> add run-time timings for it at first. And it's not that slow.
>>>
>>> Bye,
>>> bearophile
>>
>> Slightly OT: Why do languages like Ruby (and now Crystal) have 
>> to state
>> the obvious in an awkward way?
>>
>> (2...max).each do
>>
>> Of course you _do_ _each one_ from 2 to max. Is it to make it 
>> more
>> "human"?
>
> Absolutely. You are a human and you spend a lot of time reading 
> code. The more human the code looks to you, the better, I 
> think, as long as it doesn't become too long or too annoying to 
> read, like:
>
> for every number between 2 and max do
>   ...
> end
>
> :-P

Well, that was exactly my point. As a human being you don't need 
the patronizing (and highly annoying) "for every number ...". 
This is what you say when you explain it to a newbie. But there 
is no need to spell this out in the syntax. Syntax of programming 
languages is (or should be) like road signs, or any other signs. 
Concise and expressive. Else, what's the point? I know that 
languages like Lua have the philosophy that non-programmers 
should be able to use it. But every human being is capable of 
abstracting things. There is no need for this terrible syntax

(2..max).each do:

end

It doesn't add anything to the code except for useless 
characters. Humans have used signs and acronyms for ages. We can 
cope with it. I once saw the most beautiful encrypted message in 
Arabic, which when read properly unfolds into an array of 
characters and meaning. We humans can deal with it. I still don't 
see why x++; is a problem and has to be spelled out as x = x + 1, 
or even x += 1 (slightly better).

If Ruby programmers had invented spelling, you would "Double U Ar 
I Tee ee" like this. Ha ha ha! :-)