And yes, I work in multiple languages.
Performance issues, on the other hand, I can see accidentally arising.
Where you want to make sure a pointer you've been given isn't null before you try to dereference it. Without short-circuit, this becomes a segfault.
I've never seen someone use an "or" pattern in a non-confusing way.
That is, I've seen "and" patterns that act as a safety/early out. I fail to see the use of an "or" pattern where you want to stop executing if the first value is true (ignoring using nots to invert the logic of an and pattern, and I would criticize that).
They do exist in other languages. ES has it in exactly that form. Java has it in the |= form, not to be confused with the bitwise OR of the same form.
Whether or not these short-circuit is not all that interesting for most boolean logic. (Though it can be useful to know if these are used as hacky error-handling and default-setting. It depends on how you read "something" whether or not that's going on here.)
Where and when? Because I was the only person alluding to it, and the replies to my post.
> Whether or not C++ has them (it doesn't) is exactly the point of that code snippet.
C++ has boolean assignment operators that operate the way that the code is clearly meant to operate. That code does not have have a valid one. Where do you think Java got them from?
The words "boolean assignment operator" are in the first sentence after the code snippet in megous' post.
> C++ has boolean assignment operators that operate the way that the code is clearly meant to operate. That code does not have have a valid one. Where do you think Java got them from?
As far as I can tell the |= operator in C++ is the same as in C, i.e. a bitwise OR operator. It works for booleans due to their bit pattern, but it's not the same. My C++ knowledge is extremely limited, so I looked it up and I may be misinformed though.
Java's |= is different for ints and boolean. There are no bitwise operators for booleans: bool1 | bool2 is a strict logical operation (that doesn't short-circuit). bool1 |= bool2 is a logical operation that will fail when other types are mixed in. int1 |= int2 is a bitwise operation. Java does not have a short-circuiting ||= operation (but ES does).
For the most part these differences aren't that important, but they do trip people up when switching between languages.
This is true.
> It works for booleans due to their bit pattern, but it's not the same.
This makes less sense. A bool in c++ is just an integer value with few inputs. It is, as far as I can tell, the exact same.
> Java's |= is different for ints and boolean.
Java has bool and int as different types. There were versions of C++ compilers that just straight out had bool as a typedef of int.
https://www.w3schools.com/cpp/trycpp.asp?filename=demo_oper_...
||= will not assign anything unless the LHS variable is falsy. It will not even evaluate the right side unless LHS is falsy.
|= will work the same in C++ and ES mostly (depending on types)
The fact that the ||= operator short circuits makes sense from an optimization point of view. I will maintain that there is no good use for the correctness (as opposed to optimization) of the code to depend on that feature.
For skilled, experienced programmers, most mainstream languages become an implementation detail. You have to spend time learning idioms, footguns, and generally the way the language manages memory, but you absolutely can be great at 7 languages because they fundamentally do many of the same things.
I haven't hired people based on "their stack" in a long time, and it's been completely fine. Someone with skills can quickly learn your stack and be productive in it. I personally jumped on a project as a coder a few years ago having never written C# before, and I was productive in about a day. All the concepts were familiar, and the stuff I had to learn was mostly syntax.
> All the concepts were familiar, and the stuff
> I had to learn was mostly syntax.
If you can be productive in about a day, please explain why a pilot gets ATPL (airline transportation pilot license) after a minimum of 1500 hours of flight. Also please tell if you would board a plane where the pilot has 100 hours - that's an awful more than a day or even a week.
99% of the pain in a new language usually ends up being the (often god-awful) tools, platform/SDK bullshit, and learning where the clearest path is incorrect (no no no, the official docs and tutorials say to do it this way, but everyone who knows what's what actually replaces that entire part of the language/first-party libraries with this other library developed & open-sourced by some other company, since the official way is obviously so terrible, and you just have to know that, or notice by reading other people's projects—ahem, looking at you, Android). The language itself is typically nothing.
This has worked out fine for me. It does mean I've gradually grown to hate languages that lack static typing. I don't want to remember or look up things when I can make a quick note and then let the computer remember or look it up for me. I thought that was kind of our whole thing, no? Having computers do stuff for us, when they're able?
Modern development requires juggling too many technologies for most people to specialize in a single language unless their career goal is to niche themselves to that language.
So at least 4. If you combine webdev with something low level/embedded, you need at least one systems language, so you're at 5 languages you need to be proficient in.
Add one hobby language or a second web backend or systems language, and you're at 6 major languages.
7 is a lot. But 5 is plausible to be proficient in for someone who switches between webdev and lowlevel stuff to not burn out, or has a FOSS hobby.
Also proficient != expert. I met enough developers that were brilliant in their work to be convinced that 5x developers are not a myth, but they are real, while rare, occurrences. For me a senior developer in X knows the ins and outs of that X to the level that his code is an order of magnitude better in term of efficiency, performance, productivity and security. A regular developer can be just proficient, but it is not what I wrote about.
How many do remember exact operator precedence rules for all those languages, when in practice you may need just the basic ones and use () to work around the lack of exact knowledge.
Also which version? Something not working in PHP 7.3 may be ok in PHP 8, but company wants you to code in PHP 7.3, or ES5. In practice you get quickly acclimatized to any of the languages you know after working with them for a few days or a week, but good luck remembering exact rules of any of them at any given time when asked.