Artificial languages for instructing computers to do steps of computation in order to complete tasks. They allow programmers to communicate with computers.
-5
votes
0answers
56 views
How do you realistically envision programming in the far future? [on hold]
Predicting technlogies is really hard, but if you try to imagine the work of a computer programmer in a far future like Star Trek's, how would you imagine programming languages to be like?
What style ...
0
votes
1answer
68 views
freed unallocated memore in C: how to fix it? [closed]
I was trying to write a one dimensional cellular automaton that updates n-generations for m numbers, where n and m are gotten from the user in main. however, since we were learning dynamic memory ...
-2
votes
1answer
78 views
What is an effect system? [closed]
I read this Wikipedia article, but I found it quite abstract. How can an effect system help me as a programmer?
2
votes
1answer
84 views
How do I calculate server requirement for a web application
I am developing a backend where in I will be exposing APIs for my mobile application. Users can register,add products,share the links of products through email/sms/anywhere and others can click on it ...
0
votes
1answer
53 views
Concurrent languages and non-concurrent dependencies [closed]
We had a bug caused by ruby workers (4 processes, 1 thread each) doing batching records using a legacy mongodb as the store. The race condition was around whether the batch was full or not; with one ...
16
votes
3answers
374 views
Are there alternatives to types for static analysis?
Static typing in a programming language can be helpful for enforcing certain guarantees at compile time- but are types the only tool for this job? Are there other ways of specifying invariants?
For ...
1
vote
1answer
109 views
“Fuzzy” parsing in different languages
I have a bunch of plain-text like this:
1 MILE, PACE, PURSE $1,100.
FILLIES & MARES N/W $541 L5 STARTS AE N/A $301 L5 & N/A $60 PS
IN 2015-16 DRAW INSIDE
...
27
votes
13answers
2k views
Help in understanding computer science, programming and abstraction [duplicate]
Until now, I always believed that you should learn programming languages that make you do low-level stuff (e.g. C) to understand what's really happening under the hood and how the computer really ...
6
votes
4answers
448 views
in dynamic language like javascript how do you know what the argument is?
In Java or Scala if I have an argument configuration: Conf, I can look for Conf class/trait/case class and see its construct so I know which arguments to pass.
Recently I started dealing with ...
-1
votes
2answers
202 views
Does exist a reflexive compiled language? [closed]
I just wonder if exists a compiled language that can modify it's own machine code.
I know that in most common operative systems the executable code is protected during execution time, but maybe if ...
9
votes
3answers
358 views
How useful is C's “true” sizing of variables?
One thing that always intuitively struck me as a positive feature of C (well, actually of its implementations like gcc, clang, ...) is the fact that it does not store any hidden information next to ...
1
vote
2answers
95 views
Why does Scala name monadic composition as “for comprehension”?
Not sure if it's an appropriate question, but here it goes.
I know Haskell's do notation pretty well. And I realized that Scala's "for comprehension" really is just mostly the same as do notation in ...
17
votes
3answers
868 views
What is benefit that a compiler is implemented in the same language it compiles? [duplicate]
I've seen it's very common for a compiler to be made in the language it's compiling. What is the benefit of this? Seems like it makes the process for outsiders (and the developers for a while) more ...
-2
votes
1answer
119 views
How do I create my own Objective-C to Swift converter？ [closed]
I'm really interested in writing my own converter.
I know C++/Python/Objective-C/Swift and a little Haskell.
There are website like objectivec2swift and iswift.org, which can convert OC to Swift ...
2
votes
2answers
166 views
Has any language ever supported a conditional assignment target? [closed]
I've never seen a programming language with conditional assignment targets, eg.:
// If (x == y), then var1 will be set to 1, else var2 will be set to 1
((x == y) ? var1 : var2) = 1
The target of ...
0
votes
3answers
174 views
What really is the “runtime environment”?
This is a very basic question but is something I've never completely understood and recently, when studying .NET Core and ASP.NET 5 I felt the need of a more complete understanding of the topic.
...
2
votes
2answers
144 views
Private variables and the old FORTRAN common blocks [closed]
This is a question that perplexes me about object oriented programming.
In some OOP languages (e.g. C++) a member function can access private variables of the class without restriction. That means ...
-1
votes
1answer
177 views
Is C programming language low level or high level? [duplicate]
What do you think, is C programming language low or high level?
There are some information, in one is said that C is low level, and another C is high level? When I read book of Dennis Ritchie and ...
-3
votes
1answer
185 views
Designing a programming language, seeking simple and logical parameter behavior [closed]
I am designing a programming language, and would want to make it as simple as possible, conforming to layman's logic.
I've been using many programming languages, although the last few years I've been ...
2
votes
3answers
324 views
Why do most language's definition of substring allow substring(“abc”, 3) => “”
I've seen most languages have it be the case for their substring method that using the length of a given string in the method as the start index will give you an empty string. It is most definitely ...
29
votes
10answers
7k views
Why is Math.Sqrt() a static function?
In a discussion about static and instance methods, I always think, that Sqrt() should be a instance method of number types instead of a static method. Why is that? It obviously works on a value.
// ...
17
votes
1answer
2k views
Why not make a language with mixin-only inheritance? [duplicate]
It seems that in all class-based or prototypal OOP languages, mixins are either an afterthought or a secondary feature. However, to me it looks like traditional inheritance is just a specific case of ...
3
votes
2answers
184 views
What was the first language to support convenient user-land recursion?
What was the first programming language to support convenient user-land recursion?
I know that early languages did not support it, but can find no specifics on when it was introduced.
0
votes
2answers
319 views
Why doesn't Java implement a better way of handling getters and setters? [closed]
Getters and setters are everywhere in Java, but they are managed in a horribly outdated way.
Simply put: Why doesn't a newer version of Java enable a simpler syntax for managing it? Even if this ...
0
votes
1answer
46 views
Is it a reasonable task to automatically convert ANTLR grammars to my own format?
I was working on my own parser generator tool in Clojure and then I realised I want to test it with some real programming languages.
I can find a lot of existing language grammars only in antlr v4 ...
-4
votes
4answers
292 views
Why aren't named switch statements a language feature? [closed]
I could imagine the below code being somewhat useful. Is there a reason this pattern hasn't made it into programming languages?
To be clear the string was just what I chose as an example you could ...
2
votes
3answers
411 views
Is `isNaN`' a bad design or a has-to-be design with tradeoffs?
My first programming language is python. And recently I'm learning C and javascript.
In javascript, there is a design which confused me a lot, default the function isNaN.
Put aside its weird ...
0
votes
1answer
203 views
Do any languages have syntax for promises? [closed]
I'm really glad that EcmaScript 6 has promises built into the language, but the syntax will still be quite wordy:
new Promise(f).then(r => {
...
}).then(r2 =>
...
}).catch(...
I'm just ...
5
votes
2answers
410 views
How are scripting languages compiled?
I know the term "scripting languages" is just a subset of programming languages, but I want to refer to programming languages such as Python and Ruby among others.
First of all, why don't we need a ...
4
votes
2answers
437 views
Why do we need a seed in Random Number Generators?
I want to know how Random number generator(RNG) works in any PL(Programming language).
I know the random methods has short periods. i.e they start repeating the values after specific number of time.
...
3
votes
2answers
70 views
Implementing incremental builds [closed]
I'm working on a toy language.
Until now, multiple files have been compiled by merging the ASTs of each file and then running the semantic analysis and code generation phase on the merged AST.
Now ...
0
votes
2answers
125 views
Can there be value types in dynamic languages? [closed]
A value type is one whose instances are themselves saved in variables. A reference type is a type whose instances are saved somewhere and variables only hold the addresses of the instances.
Some ...
22
votes
5answers
3k views
Why do build tools use a scripting language different than underlying programming language?
I've recently been using some build tools for a Nodejs project at work when I realized that most languages' main build tool/system use a different language than the underlying programming language ...
2
votes
2answers
175 views
Why not expose activation records as data types? [closed]
Scoped languages tend to store the local variables of a given scope or function together in a data structure known as an activation record. Stack frames are examples of instances of activation ...
4
votes
4answers
216 views
What does weak static typing/strong dynamic typing mean? [closed]
For most of my career, I've been working with strong static typed languaged such as Java. For this reason, probably I've mixed up these two typing dimension (strongness and staticness). I came upon ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
Functional programming, compared to the process of a computer [duplicate]
In functional programming, it is considered bad practice (at least from my observations) to use state changes. Since computers operate in an imperative-language-like matter (performing one operation ...
-1
votes
2answers
338 views
How are complex programs made? [duplicate]
I know a few languages, and can program in them. How do multiple languages blend together in a single program? For ex. https://github.com/facebook/watchman. This uses C, PHP, Python, Javascript, etc. ...
1
vote
4answers
137 views
When is an object passed to a function?
Trying to clearly state the semantics of a function call.
In calling a function, are the arguments passed to the function the ones the calling code initially gives or the ones the function ...
20
votes
1answer
1k views
Why do arrays in .Net have Length but other collection types have Count? [closed]
In C# for example, arrays have Length property. But other collection types like lists, etc. have Count property. Is there a reason why these two are different? If so I would like to know.
16
votes
1answer
540 views
In what programming language did the use of the percent sign (%) to mean modulo/remainder originate?
In what programming language did the use of the percent sign (%) to mean modulo/remainder originate?
This previous post1 explains that the symbol % was likely chosen because it includes a slash, ...
0
votes
0answers
75 views
Why are scriptlets considered bad practice in JSPs when much more popular languages such as PHP seem not have any problem with them? [duplicate]
Why is doing
<%
if(blahblah)
{
//do something
}
%>
in a JSP considered to be bad practice when noone who writes PHP seems to have any problem with doing essentially the ...
4
votes
2answers
190 views
Are string characters assigned a numerical value in context of how they are assigned in a programming language?
For context I am fairly new to programming after returning back to it after programming a number of years ago... I was reading Bjarne's intro programming with C++ and was wondering if alphabetical ...
2
votes
2answers
138 views
Incorporating functions into a Shunting-Yard algorithm implementation
tl;dr What would be a simple way of incorporating functions into a Shunting-Yard algorithm implementation?
If only expressions like function(arg1, arg2, arg3) were allowed (where function is some ...
0
votes
2answers
168 views
Are private members useful anymore? [duplicate]
Watchpoints and data break points make it possible to watch the changes of a value in memory in many languages.
Much of the justification I have seen for getters and setters and private variables ...
2
votes
4answers
127 views
Clean Abstract Syntax Tree
I'm writing a toy compiler for fun.
Basically, my problem is that I don't want to clutter the AST with stuff like debug information (symbol tokens, locations of tokens, etc) as well as data that the ...
0
votes
0answers
43 views
Synchronizing webpage and local pdf
I would like to solve the following problem. On my website, I have a list of my publications. I also have my list of publications on a latex file of my cv. The issue is that I update these manually, ...
1
vote
1answer
11k views
What is ¬ called and what is it for? [closed]
Googling this question has proved somewhat useless, so the ¬ symbol:
What is it for?
What is is called?
Is it used in any programming languages?
-1
votes
2answers
175 views
Will statically typed, compiled programming languages be affected by Microservices Architecture? [closed]
Judging based on my experience, as systems grow bigger, statically typed languages like Java or C# tend to be more reliable and easier to manage. But do we need all the advantages of such languages ...
-2
votes
1answer
93 views
Are there languages with Primitive Types whose default values are null? [closed]
For example: in C#, the default value of int is "0"; however you have the option to use int? with a default value of "null".
Is there a language where this is non-optional?
Specifically, where the ...
0
votes
0answers
77 views
Why are datatypes different in terms of bit size based on complier, and OS used
I was reading a tutorial on C++ as I am new to programming, and I was wondering why the sizeof operator gives different output depending on what you're programming with.
