Corollaries

14 Nov 2005

• There is more than one way to do it, Larry Wall.
  • Most, if not all, of them are wrong.
• If a program manipulates a large amount of data, it does so in a small number of ways, Alan J. Perlis.
  • The small number of ways are never immediately obvious.
  • They almost never have anything to do with the purported purpose of the program.

15 Mar 2007

I have no corollary for this one, but I like it. Robbert Haarman, on the ll-discuss mailing list, wrote:

For example, functional programming can lead to very elegant and concise programs, consisting of many small functions - but not in Java. The fact that Java has no first-class functions, all methods must be associated with classes, and syntactic salt is required around both class definitions and method definitions makes functional programs a lot less elegant in Java than they could be.

1 Jun 2007

Scott Myers, Effective C++, Third Edition:

The easiest way is to view C++ not as a single language but as a federation of related languages. Within a particular sublanguage, the rules tend to be simple, straightforward, and easy to remember. When you move from one sublanguage to another, however, the rules may change. To make sense of C++, you have to recognize its primary sublanguages. Fortunately, there are only four:

• C.
• Object-Oriented C++.
• Template C++.
• The STL.

"How do I know what sublanguage I am using? How do I know when I am moving from one to another?"

No.

"What?"

Yes? Potato? You, fill the bathtub with brightly painted power tools while I paint the weasel with yogurt?

23 Jun 2007

Randall Munroe, xkcd: