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115 Example Questions (7 closed)

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up vote -1 down vote

added by Ray Butterworth Dec 25 '22 at 16:36

think question would be better with a clearer definition of "behind the curtain access". how is this different from being turing complete – cjquines Feb 5 '23 at 10:22

How does one fit a clearer definition into the remaining 12 characters? It's nothing to do with Turing. Being able to cast the pointer type in C is an example of something that can provide great efficiency but can also allow disastrous mistakes. Accessing the top bits of a floating point number to get the log of its magnitude works wonderfully, at least it does until the hardware changes. – Ray Butterworth Feb 5 '23 at 14:56

up vote 0 down vote

added by mathcat Feb 5 '23 at 10:43

up vote 1 down vote

added by mathcat Jan 1 '23 at 10:25

might be better as a looser questions, like the tradeoffs between types of strings and numbers? – cjquines Feb 5 '23 at 10:17

up vote -1 down vote

added by Philipp Dec 2 '22 at 13:15

probably better phrased positively: "How do you design a language so its compiler can tell whether or not a function is pure?", maybe? – cjquines Feb 5 '23 at 10:23

up vote -2 down vote

added by stackprotector Jan 16 '23 at 18:12

Who is "I"? A language designer can safely assume whatever they want, or rather they record their assumptions as definitions; it's up to the language implementer to make it reality. – Ray Butterworth Jan 17 '23 at 22:21

up vote 10 down vote

added by lyxal Nov 18 '22 at 13:42

Which form of multiple inheritance? A->B->C->D, or A->B, G->H, and (H+B)->Q? – warren Dec 1 '22 at 13:47

@warren I've never seen A->B->C->D referred to as multiple inheritance – Redwolf Programs Jan 10 '23 at 14:24

@RedwolfPrograms - I heard it called that when I first hit OOP back in the 90s. Maybe it isn't still? – warren Jan 10 '23 at 15:22

Aside from terminology, I can't really imagine a reason why supporting A->B->C inheritance requires any special effort once A->B is supported; whereas (A + B)->C does (because of object layout issues). – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:48

worth noting there's no single correct answer on how to do multiple inheritance in general. and so this question may end up looking more like a [tips] question? – somebody Feb 1 '23 at 6:24

up vote 10 down vote

added by emanresu A Nov 18 '22 at 0:08

I think most of the close votes on this are misunderstanding the question. It's not asking about implementing "custom"/nonstandard infix operators as a language designer, which could be done a zillion ways, it's talking about custom operators defined by the program itself, which is a more interesting problem and probably one with fewer good answers – Redwolf Programs Jan 30 '23 at 17:39

up vote 10 down vote

added by Seggan Nov 22 '22 at 15:24

I can only think of three or four; I doubt this question is actually too broad. You've got the "try-throw-catch" family, you've got interrupt-handler-style, you've got (success | failure) sum types, you've got errno… and that covers it. Not a list question. – wizzwizz4 Jan 29 '23 at 19:34

There may be only so many ways to do it, but I think this is still a valuable question for comparing the pros and cons of different approaches. How a language handles errors can greatly impact how people use it, and it may require changing other features to work more smoothly with it. – Original Original Original VI Jan 30 '23 at 3:43

up vote -1 down vote

added by Robert Columbia Nov 23 '22 at 17:25

I’m not sure if this question makes sense to ask as written here, but slight rephrasings of it may be fruitful (for example, when designing a language with the goal of it not being Turing complete). – user3840170 Nov 26 '22 at 10:37

I think being able to say your language is Turing complete is mainly a marketing thing - people want to know whether your language can do X, and you can tell them "yes, it can do everything every other Turing complete language can". In practice being Turing complete is not really a good indicator of how expressive the language is, but some people like to know about it (either because it's the bare minimum they expect from a language, or because they find it interesting that a non-programming language like CSS3 is Turing complete.) I don't know if that makes the question suitable or not. – kaya3 Dec 3 '22 at 9:35

May be better worded, "when is it OK for a language to not be Turing Complete"? – warren Dec 12 '22 at 17:53

@warren that would be even more subjective – mousetail Jan 7 '23 at 16:25

@mousetail - perhaps. – warren Jan 9 '23 at 18:42

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up vote -3 down vote

added by justANewbie Dec 17 '22 at 5:45

	Why is this being downvoted? There are successful stack based language, FORTH being most notable, which are pretty interesting. Altho this question could use some more specificity (e.g., advantages for performance, or readability?), I think it is a good one – Redwolf Programs Jan 16 '23 at 0:48
	Is Python a stack-based language, or a not-stack-based language? CPython complies it down to a stack/register machine, but you could easily take out the register instructions. – wizzwizz4 Jan 29 '23 at 19:45

up vote -3 down vote

added by justANewbie Dec 17 '22 at 16:44

This seems more opinionated than having a constant answer type of question which can lead to discussion or argument. Depending on what the user is trying to get in the finale, the question can be asked in different ways: If they are asking about things such as usability when others use it, "What does your experience with the usability of a new language generally conclude to?" might fit. Then it is no longer asking for opinions but factual results. – leguchi Dec 18 '22 at 15:08

I was trying to create a question that look like this: softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/46716 – justANewbie Jan 16 '23 at 7:01

up vote -1 down vote

added by warren Dec 6 '22 at 21:20

up vote 0 down vote

added by James Risner Nov 24 '22 at 13:11

This isn't a question. – Ray Butterworth Jan 12 '23 at 20:16

It's phrased poorly, but it is a legitimate, if subjective, question about programming language design. Granted, I don't think we'd need a whole question about the "billion dollar mistake" either--it's a bit too straightforward... – Unrelated String Jan 15 '23 at 9:52

up vote 10 down vote

added by Ginger Nov 17 '22 at 23:04

This is a bit vague. I initially read it as discussing different syntax that can be used, but now I read it as having more to do with implementation (e.g., laziness/forking). Which is it? – Redwolf Programs Nov 27 '22 at 4:15

Syntax. I have clarified. – Ginger Nov 30 '22 at 15:12

Would this question be simply looking for examples? Most languages go for a <condition> ? <true> : <false>, <condition> -> <true>, <false>, <condition> : <true> ⋄ <false>, if <condition> then <true> else <false>, <condition> ifTrue: <true> ifFalse: <false> or even WHEN <condition> THEN <true> ELSE <false> construct/variation, with or without fi/END stops, but you can use any characters/order you wish, naturally. What kind of limit is the question looking for? – Mast Dec 14 '22 at 13:05

up vote -3 down vote

added by TKirishima Nov 18 '22 at 23:27

If you downvote this question, can you please explain why? – TKirishima Nov 20 '22 at 17:13

What is a SBCS? Sounds like more than one question? (If answered the answer would be long). – James Risner Dec 3 '22 at 18:27

(SBCS = single byte character set) – somebody Jan 28 '23 at 15:18

up vote 0 down vote

added by Jacob Jan 27 '23 at 17:48

up vote 0 down vote

added by warren Jan 27 '23 at 14:09

inspired by area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/127456/… – warren Jan 27 '23 at 14:09

up vote 0 down vote

added by warren Jan 25 '23 at 17:32

I can't say this is clearly out of scope, but I wouldn't call it a good question. Line numbers are transparently an artifact of punch cards, unstructured programming, and primitive editors; it's hard to imagine why they would stick around. – Unrelated String Jan 26 '23 at 3:48

@UnrelatedString - if this proposal is about implementation, too (per the name and description), implementing a classic language could be of interest :) – warren Jan 27 '23 at 14:08

up vote -1 down vote

added by NaCl Dec 14 '22 at 18:37

This… sounds a little like a grammatical mistake unless you know that “compiler correctness” is a thing. Which might be why somebody downvoted this? – brendanzab Dec 15 '22 at 9:18

Rather than what it is, perhaps we could have a question about something specific that comes up when implementing such a compiler? – Original Original Original VI Jan 27 '23 at 1:32

The question is phrased this way since compiler correctness is a spectrum. I think it does make sense to ask what a suitable correctness criterion for a compiler is, rather than how to realize a correct compiler. These are two different pairs of shoes – NaCl Jan 27 '23 at 11:31

up vote 1 down vote

added by mousetail Jan 16 '23 at 10:12

	what do you mean by "eval"? – warren Jan 25 '23 at 17:33
	Like the eval function in JS or python – mousetail Jan 25 '23 at 17:43

up vote 19 down vote

added by emanresu A Nov 17 '22 at 23:52

This seems like a fine question to me, equally subjective as all the other advantages/disadvantages questions here – mousetail Nov 19 '22 at 6:06

What is a character? – user3840170 Nov 19 '22 at 12:13

@user3840170 a single code point. Depending on the language it could be either a ASCII character like "a" or "$" or a Unicode code point. A series of characters is called a string. – mousetail Nov 19 '22 at 12:48

This question is a bit unclear, and could use rewording: Are we talking about making strings a user-facing character array? Or are we talking about the inner guts: using a character array vs byte array internally? – Nathan Merrill Dec 1 '22 at 19:50

If 10 users pulled their upvotes from this question, moving them to others closer to the threshold, the proposal will have a better chance of progressing – warren Jan 20 '23 at 14:42

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up vote -1 down vote

added by RedzGoose Jan 10 '23 at 8:25

"specify" is unclear. Are you talking about the absence of explicit mentions of type in the source code (non-manifest typing)? Or are you talking about the lack of compile-time type verification (dynamic typing)? It's entirely possible for type to be both inferred and static, as in Haskell-family languages. But in another sense, even Python "specifies" datatypes, in that values have types even if variables (names) don't. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:33

up vote 10 down vote

added by lyxal Nov 19 '22 at 6:46

Since this has collected 4 close votes and discussion about "should" questions is ongoing, it might be worth rewording this to focus more on the "why or why not" or "advantages/disadvantages of" – Redwolf Programs Jan 10 '23 at 15:00

@redwolfprograms I've edited it to not use should – lyxal Jan 11 '23 at 3:44

up vote 0 down vote

added by stackprotector Jan 16 '23 at 18:10

up vote 0 down vote

added by Logan Devine Jan 15 '23 at 1:22

up vote -2 down vote

added by Ray Butterworth Dec 25 '22 at 16:19

This would definitely be closed as needing more focus on the actual site. – damryfbfnetsi Jan 12 '23 at 7:02

Why the down and close votes? FORTRAN decided complex numbers were part of the language, C decided that they should be handled by libraries. This question is asking about how such decisions are made when designing a language. – Ray Butterworth Jan 13 '23 at 21:38

up vote 0 down vote

added by justANewbie Dec 17 '22 at 16:53

English grammar demands noun phrases here; adjectival phrases don't nominalize implicitly. So: "... strong typing vs weak typing?" Alternately: "strongly typed vs weakly typed languages?", allowing the adjectival phrases to modify something. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:34

up vote 1 down vote

added by justANewbie Dec 17 '22 at 16:44

	By "handling big numbers", do you mean "having a built-in arbitrary-precision integer type"? Do you mean "having such a type exclusively, without also supporting concretely sized integer types"? Or just what? – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:39
	@Anoymous I mean "having a built-in arbitrary-precision integer type", specifically more than 64 bits. – justANewbie Jan 13 '23 at 7:40

up vote 1 down vote

added by Bubbler, edited by warren Dec 5 '22 at 15:57

Relooper algorithms are used for decompiling code. While an important topic, it doesn't seem particularly relevant to programming language design. – curiousdannii Nov 19 '22 at 9:02

@curiousdannii Relooper is relevant to compiling to wasm if the source language has gotos or other forms of control flow not supported by wasm. – Bubbler Nov 20 '22 at 1:38

@curiousdannii area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32843/… – mousetail Nov 22 '22 at 6:51

Even if that is the case, I'd prefer a question that asks it from the perspective of implementation. E.g. "How should I compile my goto into wasm?" – Nathan Merrill Dec 1 '22 at 19:57

Hmm yeah, makes sense. I'll change it. – Bubbler Dec 1 '22 at 23:20

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up vote 0 down vote

added by NaCl Dec 14 '22 at 18:44

This seems much too vague and unfocused to be answerable. Which optimizations would you be considering? – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:58

up vote 0 down vote

added by Jan 12 '23 at 19:56

up vote 10 down vote

added by BoppreH Nov 18 '22 at 18:54

This is essentially the same as this: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/127456/… – mousetail Nov 19 '22 at 6:33

@mousetail I disagree, the linked question requires having a character type, but having a character type doesn't imply that strings are just arrays. – BoppreH Nov 19 '22 at 20:02

Rust is an example of a language which has separate types for strings and characters, but in which strings are not arrays of characters (they are arrays of bytes, UTF-8 encoded, so each character may be 1-4 bytes). – kaya3 Nov 22 '22 at 7:37

@mousetail I also disagree: implementing a string as an array of "characters" internally doesn't imply that the character type is exposed. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:49

@RayButterworth no. For example, in Java, char is a 16-bit unsigned type intended to store a UTF-16 value (code point or half of a surrogate pair).Bytes are not characters, just as data is not text. The question is about the decision made by Java (and many others) to have char exist as an exposed-to-the-user type separate from String, as opposed to the decision made by Python and Javascript (and probably others I can't think of right now) whereby indexing a string results in a string of length 1. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:52

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up vote 10 down vote

added by Nathan Merrill Nov 18 '22 at 21:20

What is a first-class function? – user3840170 Nov 19 '22 at 13:05

It is a function that can be passed around as data – Seggan Nov 19 '22 at 14:39

This seems a bit vague or unclear. Since it's data, "compiled" sounds off. While it's certainly possible to explain a process for implementing the feature and compiling a language that supports them directly to assembly, it comes across that the person asking might have some misconceptions that prevent clear communication. It would, I suppose, depend on the body of the question. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:46

up vote -1 down vote

added by Adám, edited by warren Dec 5 '22 at 16:53

I think fundamentally, this is a good question, but I'd prefer "storing" over "dealing with", as "dealing" is a bit vague. – Nathan Merrill Dec 1 '22 at 19:59

@NathanMerrill I intended to include things like slicing, indexing, counting, etc. – Adám Dec 1 '22 at 22:00

"How can unicode text data be indexed?" would be a more specific question. Slicing is just indexing twice, and counting is somewhat implied since the number of characters is equal to the last index plus one (though "how can I count characters in Unicode text data?" might work as a separate question). – kaya3 Dec 2 '22 at 13:39

@Adám - made a tweak so it's more inline with what you're proposing – warren Dec 5 '22 at 16:54

I think there would rather be a question about what gotchas exist in dealing with Unicode (which could be answered by highlighting topics like collation, characters composed of multiple code points etc.), and then separate questions about how to deal with each of those. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:38

up vote 0 down vote

added by NaCl Dec 14 '22 at 18:39

This sounds like a sort of reference question that should be asked by someone capable of self-answering. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:35

up vote 0 down vote

added by Jan 12 '23 at 19:29

up vote -2 down vote

added by themisir Nov 18 '22 at 18:21

up vote -2 down vote

added by TKirishima Nov 18 '22 at 23:20

What is a template string? – user3840170 Nov 19 '22 at 12:10

@user3840170 I think it's like f"" strings in python or ${} strings in javascript. Strings with a spot to insert expression in that will be evaluated at runtime. – mousetail Nov 19 '22 at 18:06

The point though is that this isn't necessarily a universally-understood term; it's specific to JavaScript. Terms like ‘interpolation’ or ‘formatting’ would be more language-agnostic. – user3840170 Nov 19 '22 at 18:21

I think template string is well understood to include the PHP, python etc. equivalents. – mousetail Nov 20 '22 at 12:06

formatting isn't that. String formatting: is "%d = %s". And as said by Mousetail, this term is also used in other programming languages such as PHP. – TKirishima Nov 20 '22 at 17:11

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up vote 10 down vote

added by lyxal Nov 17 '22 at 23:01

Is this a real question? Or is it a stand in for any number of values it X and Y? – James Risner Nov 22 '22 at 17:46

It is indeed a stand-in for any specific language x and language feature y. – lyxal Nov 22 '22 at 21:42

Only the language creator can really answer this. Everyone else can only speculate. – finnw Nov 22 '22 at 22:56

@warren I see no reason why knowledge from what the designers and implementers of popular languages have said about those languages should be off-limits for a Stack Exchange site meant for sharing knowledge about language design and implementation. The point is that that knowledge can be shared without requiring those specific individuals to write it here themselves. – kaya3 Dec 1 '22 at 20:18

@warren In a trivial, irrelevant sense, you are correct if you also define an answer quoting somebody else as an answer given by that person. But (1) that is just not what "answering a question" means on Stack Exchange (the person who wrote the answer and whose profile name, avatar and reputation appear on that answer is the person who answered the question), and (2) it is totally clear from context that the comment you are defending does not define "answering" in that way, otherwise it would make no sense as an objection to this question belonging on the site. So it seems to me that you ... – kaya3 Dec 5 '22 at 14:14

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up vote 0 down vote

added by alephalpha Jan 9 '23 at 8:35