Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hey all y'all,
> 
> 
> Here's another nice bicycle shed discussion. During the recent discussion about globals being harmful, Walter told me something that made me think. I said, hey, there are things that are global - look at stdout. He said, well, that's a bad thing. He then argued that it would be better and cleaner to write:
> 
> stdout.writeln("Hello, world");
> 
> instead of the current:
> 
> writeln("Hello, world");
> 
> On one hand, I agree with Walter. On the other, I want to avoid the phenomenon of the all-too-long "Hello, world" example.
> 
> What do you think?

1. It is not often that a program that is first designed to write to stdout is changed to write to somewhere else. (The whole reason of stdout is, after all, that you can redirect outside the program!)

2. Of course it would be Proper (as in Prudent, almost as in goody two-shoes) to write stdout.writeln. But then, to be useful the programmer should write myOutDestination.writeln in order to be able to "conveniently" later change the destination.

3. IMHO later redefining stdout would be a moronic idea. (And /definitely/ not Prudent!)

4. Globals, shmobals... globals in spirit vs. globals in techicality. I can't /believe/ there's any idea in totally banning globals. Heck, this language has *goto*. Blind purism has made a few other languages impractical.

5. Good defaults a good UI make. Can't we just decide that a bare writeln(...) is defined as writing to stdout, period? Without thinking of globals.

6. stdout is "global" to such an extent, that it actually exists outside of the program. (RTF *nix man, man!)

Blehhhhhhh....

PS, I don't think you were serious with the post.

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

...

> I said, hey, there are things that are global - look at stdout. He said, well, that's a bad thing. He then argued that it would be better and cleaner to write:
> 
> stdout.writeln("Hello, world");
> 
> instead of the current:
> 
> writeln("Hello, world");


int x;

I suggest we forbid int totally. It is too [insert something here], and it is ambiguous, strictly speaking.

So forbid it, and force the programmer to explicitly specify signed or unsigned, every single time. It would be better and cleaner.

Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Hey all y'all,
>>
>>
>> Here's another nice bicycle shed discussion. During the recent discussion about globals being harmful, Walter told me something that made me think. I said, hey, there are things that are global - look at stdout. He said, well, that's a bad thing. He then argued that it would be better and cleaner to write:
>>
>> stdout.writeln("Hello, world");
>>
>> instead of the current:
>>
>> writeln("Hello, world");
>>
>> On one hand, I agree with Walter. On the other, I want to avoid the phenomenon of the all-too-long "Hello, world" example.
>>
>> What do you think?
> 
> There must be something I'm missing here. Either writeln is using a global "stdout" which you can't see in it's interface, or you are using that global "stdout" yourself and invoking writeln on it. There's still a global around. Nothing solved.

The difference is that in the current call the use of the global is implicit.

Andrei

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Hey all y'all,
>>
>>
>> Here's another nice bicycle shed discussion. During the recent discussion about globals being harmful, Walter told me something that made me think. I said, hey, there are things that are global - look at stdout. He said, well, that's a bad thing. He then argued that it would be better and cleaner to write:
>>
>> stdout.writeln("Hello, world");
> 
> But then stdout is still global :-)  However, I do think an "fwritef" routine would be good to have--I tend to write to stderr as often as stdout.

Yah, there is in the elusive new Phobos which I still can't release due to compiler bugs:

auto f = File("foo.txt", "w");
f.writef("%s", 42);


Andrei

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:
>> Hey all y'all,
>>
>>
>> Here's another nice bicycle shed discussion. During the recent discussion
>> about globals being harmful, Walter told me something that made me think. I
>> said, hey, there are things that are global - look at stdout. He said, well,
>> that's a bad thing. He then argued that it would be better and cleaner to
>> write:
>>
>> stdout.writeln("Hello, world");
>>
>> instead of the current:
>>
>> writeln("Hello, world");
>>
>> On one hand, I agree with Walter. On the other, I want to avoid the
>> phenomenon of the all-too-long "Hello, world" example.
>>
>> What do you think?
> 
> Keep writefln.  You're only going to be using it when (1) you're doing
> debugging, when you want it short, and (2) you're writing a simple
> console program.  There's always dout.writefln when you need more
> power.

Is dout in the std.stream thing? That entire framework is due for retirement.

Andrei

Max Samukha wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:56:58 -0700, Sean Kelly
> <sean@invisibleduck.org> wrote:
> 
>> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> Hey all y'all,
>>>
>>>
>>> Here's another nice bicycle shed discussion. During the recent discussion about globals being harmful, Walter told me something that made me think. I said, hey, there are things that are global - look at stdout. He said, well, that's a bad thing. He then argued that it would be better and cleaner to write:
>>>
>>> stdout.writeln("Hello, world");
>> But then stdout is still global :-)  However, I do think an "fwritef" routine would be good to have--I tend to write to stderr as often as stdout.
> 
> writef recognizes if its first parameter is a stream. you can already
> use writef(stderr, ...)

(Not in the upcoming Phobos.)


Andrei

== Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org)'s article
> Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> > Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> >> Hey all y'all,
> >>
> >>
> >> Here's another nice bicycle shed discussion. During the recent discussion about globals being harmful, Walter told me something that made me think. I said, hey, there are things that are global - look at stdout. He said, well, that's a bad thing. He then argued that it would be better and cleaner to write:
> >>
> >> stdout.writeln("Hello, world");
> >>
> >> instead of the current:
> >>
> >> writeln("Hello, world");
> >>
> >> On one hand, I agree with Walter. On the other, I want to avoid the phenomenon of the all-too-long "Hello, world" example.
> >>
> >> What do you think?
> >
> > There must be something I'm missing here. Either writeln is using a global "stdout" which you can't see in it's interface, or you are using that global "stdout" yourself and invoking writeln on it. There's still a global around. Nothing solved.
> The difference is that in the current call the use of the global is implicit.

Once D will accept both syntaxes for methods, it will be up to the user.

void fn( t1 p1, t2, p2 );
fn( v1, v2 ); <-> v1.fn( v2 );

Georg Wrede wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Hey all y'all,
>>
>>
>> Here's another nice bicycle shed discussion. During the recent discussion about globals being harmful, Walter told me something that made me think. I said, hey, there are things that are global - look at stdout. He said, well, that's a bad thing. He then argued that it would be better and cleaner to write:
>>
>> stdout.writeln("Hello, world");
>>
>> instead of the current:
>>
>> writeln("Hello, world");
>>
>> On one hand, I agree with Walter. On the other, I want to avoid the phenomenon of the all-too-long "Hello, world" example.
>>
>> What do you think?
> 
> 1. It is not often that a program that is first designed to write to stdout is changed to write to somewhere else. (The whole reason of stdout is, after all, that you can redirect outside the program!)
> 
> 2. Of course it would be Proper (as in Prudent, almost as in goody two-shoes) to write stdout.writeln. But then, to be useful the programmer should write myOutDestination.writeln in order to be able to "conveniently" later change the destination.
> 
> 3. IMHO later redefining stdout would be a moronic idea. (And /definitely/ not Prudent!)
> 
> 4. Globals, shmobals... globals in spirit vs. globals in techicality. I can't /believe/ there's any idea in totally banning globals. Heck, this language has *goto*. Blind purism has made a few other languages impractical.
> 
> 5. Good defaults a good UI make. Can't we just decide that a bare writeln(...) is defined as writing to stdout, period? Without thinking of globals.
> 
> 6. stdout is "global" to such an extent, that it actually exists outside of the program. (RTF *nix man, man!)
> 
> Blehhhhhhh....
> 
> PS, I don't think you were serious with the post.

I was, serious and especially curious. I'm with you on all of the above.

Andrei

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Georg Wrede wrote:
>> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> Hey all y'all,
>>>
>>>
>>> Here's another nice bicycle shed discussion. During the recent discussion about globals being harmful, Walter told me something that made me think. I said, hey, there are things that are global - look at stdout. He said, well, that's a bad thing. He then argued that it would be better and cleaner to write:
>>>
>>> stdout.writeln("Hello, world");
>>>
>>> instead of the current:
>>>
>>> writeln("Hello, world");
>>>
>>> On one hand, I agree with Walter. On the other, I want to avoid the phenomenon of the all-too-long "Hello, world" example.
>>>
>>> What do you think?
>>
>> 1. It is not often that a program that is first designed to write to stdout is changed to write to somewhere else. (The whole reason of stdout is, after all, that you can redirect outside the program!)
>>
>> 2. Of course it would be Proper (as in Prudent, almost as in goody two-shoes) to write stdout.writeln. But then, to be useful the programmer should write myOutDestination.writeln in order to be able to "conveniently" later change the destination.
>>
>> 3. IMHO later redefining stdout would be a moronic idea. (And /definitely/ not Prudent!)
>>
>> 4. Globals, shmobals... globals in spirit vs. globals in techicality. I can't /believe/ there's any idea in totally banning globals. Heck, this language has *goto*. Blind purism has made a few other languages impractical.
>>
>> 5. Good defaults a good UI make. Can't we just decide that a bare writeln(...) is defined as writing to stdout, period? Without thinking of globals.
>>
>> 6. stdout is "global" to such an extent, that it actually exists outside of the program. (RTF *nix man, man!)
>>
>> Blehhhhhhh....
>>
>> PS, I don't think you were serious with the post.
> 
> I was, serious and especially curious. I'm with you on all of the above.

:-)

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:46:37 +0300, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:

> "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.967.1237304767.22690.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
>> On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 08:35:35AM -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> What do you think?
>>
>> Eeek. That's too much typing for a trivial, common operation.
>>
>> I wouldn't mind writefln being implemented as a macro that is turned to
>> fwritefln(stdout, ...)
>>
>> But, I'd be fairly annoyed having to write the extra seven characters each
>> time if the short version wasn't there.
>>
>
> That's how tango and C# do it.
>
> Stdout.formatln("Hello"); // Tango
> Console.WriteLine("Hello"); // C#
>
> My preference has always been for something shorter, but the current
> tango/C# ways have never really bothered me. You get used to it pretty
> quick.
>
>

That's not a very frequent operation. In most cases you should use Cout("Hello"); instead. An ideal design solution, imo (fast, short and clear).

Back on topic, in most cases I use:

debug writefln("hello");

because I have no console in release version (and it throws when there is no stdout, look in the bugzilla for a bug report). It is already long enough, so I wouldn't like it to be even longer:

debug stdio.writefln("hello");

My 0.02 rubles.