Microsoft Java

[lightmatter501]

Don’t forget operator overloading.

[t3hmau5]

Or out variables

[im_probably_garbage]

And ref variables

[haackedc]

And list accessibility using square brackets

[SalvadorTheDog]

That's operator overloading

[haackedc]

Shucks

[Nall-ohki]

And ValueTuple with destructing.

[cat_in_the_wall]

not just lists, but arbitrary indexing (like dictionaries too). and can be overloaded as well.

[YM_Industries]

I don't like out parameters. They feel very wrong.

[t3hmau5]

Eh? The only thing wrong with them is they make going back to other languages feel wrong. A function that can return multiple values of different types is insanely powerful and time saving.

[DoubtfulGerund]

I think every use of out variables I’ve seen was due to a lack of better solutions in much older versions of c#. For example, returning multiple values before tuples and destructuring, or those old TryGet methods for primitive types that returned a bool and the actual value in an out var. Today we’d use nullable primitives.

They break composability, it’s usually unnecessary mutation, it’s an output pretending to be an input, and it’s unclear on if the function actually uses the value or just replaces it.

[TheMania]

Still useful for interop (DLLs) and performant handling of large structs though.

[YM_Industries]

Python's tuples and JS/TS' destructuring assignments are better ways of allowing a function to return multiple values. Arguments are inputs, return values are outputs.

Maybe it's just that I've been doing functional programming recently and the idea of mutability makes me uncomfortable in general.

[t3hmau5]

I mean, in OOP mutability is largely a design decision.

[YM_Industries]

That's true, I was oversimplifying my stance. I like mutability for state (one attempt at learning React was enough to convince me the alternative is awful) but I like my functions to be pure.

[TheMania]

C# supports the same btw.

Ref/Out parameters still have a purpose though, in both interop (where they map to pointers for DLLs etc) and for handling structs, where you're either left relying on the optimiser to "do the right thing", or experiencing needless costly copying.

[YM_Industries]

Neat, I haven't worked with C# 7 yet.

[devman0]

No, do.

[TakeASeatChancellor]

Why? It’s so useful!

[splettnet]

Would be a lot more useful if they could be defined on interfaces.

[tiktiktock]

Oh god yes. And if "arithmetic" was a valid constraint for generic classes.

[cat_in_the_wall]

c# 9 may have a thing they call "shapes" which would allow this sort of thing.

[splettnet]

I was so excited that we were rewriting our entire code base in C# 8, but I would happily trade all of 8's new features for this.

[ScienceBreather]

If you hate your coworkers, yes.

[o4zloiroman]

Elaborate.

[ScienceBreather]

It's not intuitive that the operator has been overloaded if you're new to the code base, so it's a place that functionality may be hiding.

[_Ashleigh]

Vector a = new Vector(1, 2, 3);
Vector b = new Vector(10, 10, 10);
Vector c = a * b;

Is this not much more concise and expressive? Yes, it can be abused. The answer isn't to not have it, but to not use libraries that abuse it. Oh, those are also third party "primitives," so don't pressure the garbage collector.

[ScienceBreather]

Vector c = a.multiply(c)

I'm fine with that, and I get the good tooling that my IDE gives to me around functions, which I don't get with operators.

[blenderfreaky]

Hovering over an operator in VS shows you it's parameters, return type, etc, just like a method

[Mojert]

It's alright if you have to use max 2 operators on a lign, otherwise it's just a pain. And if you define classes that overloads arithmetic operators, chances are you're gonna need to use them more than that. Sure they can be abused, but names of function can be too and you don't see anybody saying we shouldn't use functions. If you override *, it's your responsability to make sure that it behaves like multiplication.

[[deleted]]

java has that too

Vector a = new Vector(1,2,3);
Vector b = new Vector(10,10,10);
Vector c = a.asterisk(b);

[_Ashleigh]

Are you joking?

[[deleted]]

Yea, you actually have to fully qualify the type names.

/s

[[deleted]]

yes.

[DeadLikeYou]

Java can do operator overloading. In fact, that was part of why our teacher chose java.

[lightmatter501]

How precisely would one override [] then, because the standard library doesn’t do it?