Comparing the Same Project in Rust, Haskell, C++, Python, Scala and OCaml

Re:Comparing the Same Project in Rust, Haskell, C++, Python,... by geofft on Saturday June 15, 2019 @09:38PM (#20193297)

I'd encourage your coworker to use a language where if/else is an expression and not a statement. :) Of the languages mentioned in the article, Rust, Haskell, Scala, and OCaml all have this as the only form of if/else: you can write something like x = if foo then bar else baz, so you can nest them with some parentheses for readability. Python's if/else is a statement, but it has a slightly different syntax for the if/else as an expression - bar if foo else baz - which is a little less readable but still workable.

It's only the Algol-syntax-family languages (C, C++, Java, JavaScript, etc.) that have the inscrutable ternary operator and if/else as a statement.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Comparing the Same Project in Rust, Haskell, C++, Python,... by pincus on Sunday June 16, 2019 @09:34AM (#20195356)

Algol family syntax is not the same as C syntax. Algol 60 has if-then-else as an expression like "x := if foo then bar else baz". In Algol 68, an ENCLOSED-clause like if-then-else-fi is a PRIMARY, so it can be used anywhere other primaries like identifiers and denotations (literal constants) can be used. "Begin" and "end" are synonyms for ( and ). Both languages are defined on the level of symbols instead of bytes or characters. These symbols can have multiple representations including punctuation and text in non-English languages like Russian. A lot of people today don't know what Algol family syntax looks like which is a real shame because they're very clean and elegant languages.

[ Parent | on HN ]