language-design

Java provides java.io.Serializable and java.lang.Cloneable in his standard library (and special support for it in the language and the JVM) for tasks around deserializing/serializing/cloning. Has C# chosen a different path to provide this functionality, how does the implementation and code using it differ from Java and why was it done this way? As an example, why does C# use both an attribute (annotation) and an interface for serialization? .NET doesn't use ISerializable as just a marker interface. It acts not only as a marker, but also allows you to control exactly how .NET will serialize the

While studying the standard Java library and its classes, i couldn't help noticing that some of those classes have methods that, in my opinion, have next to no relevance to those classes' cause. The methods i'm talking about are, for example, Integer#getInteger , which retrieves a value of some "system property", or System#arraycopy , whose purpose is well-defined by its name. Still, both of these methods seem kinda out of place, especially the first one, which for some reason binds working with system resources to a primitive type wrapper class. From my current point of view, such method

From python wiki Multiple Element Tuples In Python, multiple-element tuples look like: 1,2,3 ... but again, it is the commas, not the parentheses, that define the tuple. Oh, really?! Then why: >>> tuple((((((1, 2, 3)))))) # creates a valid tuple # (1, 2, 3) >>> tuple(1, 2, 3, ) # But not here # TypeError: tuple() takes at most 1 argument (3 given) More seriously, I don't get why the parenthesis was not chosen over the commas? Because I think it would create a paradox when: >>> 1, # is a valid tuple # (1,) >>> tuple([1]) # Or this # (1,) >>> tuple(1) # But not this one # TypeError: 'int' object

I am currently developing a compiler for a very limited object oriented language. I want to treat all values as objects and operators on those values will be implemented as methods. The compiler transforms the program into assembler for a stack-based virtual machine. During compilation I transform integer literals into objects of a special "Integer" class. Arithmetic operators are implemented as methods of that class (using inline assembler). So that 4 + 5 basically equals to 4.add(5) . The problem I am facing right now is the special case for boolean values. If there is an if statement: if(10

Why can't I do this? explode(',','1,2,3', 1)[0] Every other language supports it. Answers I'm looking for: (since people seem to think this is a pointless rant) Is there some sort of a difference between how a variable and a return value behaves that I should be made aware of? Was this a design decision? Were they just lazy? Is there something about the way the language was built that makes this exceedingly difficult to implement? Why can't I do this? Because PHP doesn't currently support this syntax. But you can pass it to a function, e.g.: current(explode(',','1,2,3', 1)); Otherwise, you

Python not support adding a tuple to a list: >>> [1,2,3] + (4,5,6) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: can only concatenate list (not "tuple") to list What are the disadvantages for providing such a support in the language? Note that I would expect this to be symmetric: [1, 2] + (3, 4) and (1, 2) + [3, 4] would both evaluate to a brand-new list [1, 2, 3, 4] . My rationale is that once someone applied operator + to a mix of tuples and lists, they are likely to do it again (very possibly in the same expression), so we might as well provide the list