James Iry

316 reputation

	316 reputation	bio	website	james-iry.blogspot.com	visits	member for	2 years, 2 months
13 badges		location			seen	Feb 11 at 19:48

9 Actions

Nov 12	awarded	Nice Answer
Oct 25	awarded	Yearling
Sep 7	awarded	Editor
Sep 7	revised	How do you encode Algebraic Data Types in a C#- or Java-like language? added 27 characters in body
Sep 6	answered	How do you encode Algebraic Data Types in a C#- or Java-like language?
Feb 3	awarded	Teacher
Feb 3	answered	Unit-testing of inherently random/non-deterministic algorithms
Mar 4	comment	What do Java developers think of Scala? Now, Martin Odersky has compared the size of the formal grammars of the languages. That's a reasonable measure of one aspect of complexity. But it's only reasonable because grammars aren't as flexible as English. Even then, you have to be careful. Just as with ordinary programs, you can easily stretch or shrink grammars with different choices about how to lay them out, how many distinct productions to include, what base character classes to assume, etc.
Mar 4	comment	What do Java developers think of Scala? Number of pages in the language spec is a TERRIBLE way to compare complexity of two languages. Just to give two examples: the Java spec is written in a nearly tutorial fashion while the Scala spec is written in a very terse fashion. Or another example, C# 2.0 was actually roughly as complex as Java today, or perhaps a bit more complex given the "unsafe" machinery, delegates, and prpoerties. But as you note the C#2.0 spec is smaller than the JLS.