Julia Language Co-Creators Win James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software

Re:Julia Language Co-Creators Win James H. Wilkinson Prize f... by yellowapple on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @02:20PM (#18981654)

Ruby and Elixir both made the same decision, and I don't feel like it's had an actual negative impact, for me at least; I've found both languages to be delightfully readable. I haven't dabbled very much in Julia since the pre-1.0 days, but I don't recall it being any more or less jarring.

I suppose it could indeed be jarring if you're not already used to languages which use 'end' to terminate blocks, but after awhile your brain will just start to treat 'end' synonymously with '}' and all will be right with the world.

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Re:Julia Language Co-Creators Win James H. Wilkinson Prize f... by mruts on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @08:46PM (#18985278)

I mean, maybe it's not a big deal. But what value does it add? What if we had a 50 character string of random digits be the terminating identifier for a block? What about 100 characters? What about 200? Syntax shouldn't create visual noise, it should be as lightweight as possible.

Maybe someone can justify why a 3 character word (end) doesn't really matter. But can someone give an argument on how it adds value versus one character (a bracket), or zero characters (visible at least), a tab?

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Re:Julia Language Co-Creators Win James H. Wilkinson Prize f... by yellowapple on Thursday January 24, 2019 @01:35PM (#18991487)

Because 'end' has a specific meaning in English, and that meaning translates well to ending a block. If you decide you want a programming language geared toward Spanish speakers, 'end' would indeed be gibberish (unless they also speak English), but 'fin' would not be.

You can certainly argue that '}' is language-agnostic and therefore a better choice, and I wouldn't disagree with you. But 'end' is by no means an arbitrary choice for a character sequence that ends a block.

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Re:Julia Language Co-Creators Win James H. Wilkinson Prize f... by xiaodai on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @08:57PM (#18985331)

it's easier to read.

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Re:Julia Language Co-Creators Win James H. Wilkinson Prize f... by mruts on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @09:02PM (#18985360)

If every sentence ended in an "end" instead of a period, would you posit that that would be easier to read as well?

The crux of the issue is the signal to noise ratio. The more noise there is (syntax), the more difficult it is to pick up the signal (the semantics).

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Re:Julia Language Co-Creators Win James H. Wilkinson Prize f... by xiaodai on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @09:16PM (#18985426)

Sentence is not code! According to your logic, when do you see {} in prose?

begin some code some more code end

It's easier to read.

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