Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote: > retard wrote: > > Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:04:32 -0600, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: > > > >> Walter Bright wrote: > >>> The Haskell folks really need to find a better canonical example. > >> > >> The footnote says (how the hell did this make it through the editorial > >> pass???) > >> > >> "This code is shown for its elegance rather than its efficiency. Using > >> ++ in this way is not generally considered good programming practice." > >> > >> So if the code is inefficient and in poor programming practice, how in > >> this blessed world could it count as elegant? > >> > > So now that you've finished writing your own book you have nothing else > > to do but to bash all books written by users of competitive languages. > > How low.. > > Apparently I haven't managed to qualify my statements well enough - I > tried to make it clear I'm not going for cheap shots, so I'm a bit > puzzled that you fell exactly for that. > > > I'm 100% sure I can find a suboptimal programming example from some C/C++/ > > D book. > > Yah, but that's not the one that's featured prominently as one of the > coolest examples there is, and it wouldn't be horrendously bad. > Virtually all introductions to FP contain this ridiculous qsort. It > should be dipped in tar and feathers and showed around the town. > > > Just like an operating system implementation book discusses Minix > > or some educational kernel, it's not really a surprise that programming > > books have naive examples. I'm not really interested to hear how latest > > win7 or linux 2.6.33 kernel patch solves some SATA2 / btrfs issue when > > reading about filesystems and buses. You should take those words about > > relative elegance with a grain of salt. Functional code is usually less > > verbose, less buggy, a bit less efficient due to many issues etc. These > > are things most professionals agree with. Apparently D users need to > > enhance their e-dick by ranting about everything that's not done in d > > just to get a tiny bit of publicity. > > I think it would grow yours to understand what functional qsort's > problems are.
Don't have much time to read D NG these days but I saw this and felt it fair to reply. "Elegant" FP qsorts are the aquintessential, useless big O, examples of academic FP (as opposed to real-world, practical FP). Gotta give Andrei due for his command of the English language. Sometimes he sounds like a modern day Shakespeare. "... introductions to FP contain this ridiculous qsort. It should be dipped in tar and feathers and showed around the town" Disagree though; having watched The Scarlet Pimpernel last night, I'd rather suggest the guillotine? > > Apparently D users need to > > enhance their e-dick by ranting about everything that's not done in d > > just to get a tiny bit of publicity. Currently I wouldn't classify myself as a D user but think that very unfair statement is well deserving of Andrei's curt reply: "... it would grow yours to understand what functional qsort's problems are." Justin Johansson
