Nim 1.6 - Hackdot

Re:Nim 1.6 by haxscramper on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @07:05AM (#28916835)

This way you can write json literals in the code, and it will look just like regular json. For serialization and deserialization stdlib uses `to/load/store` proc names.

  import std/json

  echo %*{
    "key1": "value",
    "key2": 12,
  }

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Re:Nim 1.6 by clusterfish on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @07:30AM (#28916960)

Could have just used a "JSON" keyword instead. Symbolic names are needlessly obscure and unfriendly. Hard to infer meaning, hard to pronounce, hard to search online, etc.

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Re:Nim 1.6 by dunefox on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @07:57AM (#28917128)

As if "json" is any more searchable. Operators have a meaning that you learn quickly when learning the language. You wouldn't do math with "multiply" instead of "*", so why would you want that in a programming language?

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Re:Nim 1.6 by mkl on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @08:25AM (#28917332)

Multiply already has a symbol, and JSON already has a name. Making up a symbol %* to mean JSON is like making up a name Flurb to mean *. Sticking with what already exists seems much simpler.

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Re:Nim 1.6 by dandellion on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @08:26AM (#28917338)

Because with a keyword the meaning is much more explicit, and I consider that to be more valuable. And I think "*" is a bad example because pretty much everyone who programs already knows it's multiplication.

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Re:Nim 1.6 by dunefox on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @09:04AM (#28917619)

It might not be the best example, but the point stands. Succinct notation is important. "JSON" instead of "%*" might not be the greatest of examples but still.

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Re:Nim 1.6 by mixedCase on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @09:55AM (#28918095)

Because there's no point in saving three characters (although I'd rather have it be "literal_json" or "inline_json") just to have people memorize what yet another symbol means in a highly specialized context when you could just read the word and be perfectly certain what the code means without looking it up the first time.

Even after the first time symbols have a non-trivial cognitive cost for a lot of people, if not most, all while providing near zero benefit unless your app is pretty much nothing but a bunch of inline json expansions.

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Re:Nim 1.6 by clusterfish on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @08:47AM (#28917482)

Of course it is. It's descriptive and searchable.

Because * / - + is the common ground that essentially everyone is familiar with. And that's about as much math notation as makes sense in general purpose programming languages.

There is only one math but many programming languages. Multiplication is universal and fundamental. Creating JSON objects in nim is the opposite of that.

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Re:Nim 1.6 by dunefox on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @09:00AM (#28917589)

> Of course it is. It's descriptive and searchable.

If I entered "nim json" into google I'd get thousands of results for the language and json in general, and no way to narrow it down to meaning the operator "JON". That's not really what searchable means.

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Re:Nim 1.6 by clusterfish on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @03:43PM (#28922724)

> no way to narrow it down to meaning the operator

My google insider tells me you can add the word "operator" to your query to do that. Or any other similar word like "keyword" that anyone else thought to call it on stack overflow.

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