On Saturday, 7 August 2021 at 12:15:15 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

Just to point out that using Java as a sample seems a bit off. Java (well, the JVM) is the ultimate in restrictive. It's a compiler that doesn't emit CPU code, but safe(r) emulation in a sandbox. ....

On Saturday, 7 August 2021 at 12:15:15 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

Zig does stuff like this and it's why I can't take that language seriously. At all. To paraphrase what I was told by Zig's community and BDFL: "if there's multiple ways to do something then obviously dumb dumb programmer will get it completely wrong".

I like programming languages that help me catch bugs (D or Rust), not languages that treat me like a 3 year old.

On Sunday, 8 August 2021 at 09:49:41 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:

To be fair, I don't think lack of unsigned integers is a big deal. Because many operators do not care whether it's signed or unsigned that's being used, and for the remaining ones (divide, modulus, right shift) the language can define standard library functions.

But I do agree in general that either Java does not have much faith in programmer ability, or they value implementation simplicity much more than readability. I can see no other reasons for disallowing free functions or requiring curly braces for every singe if or while statement. Or for requiring repeating public on every public member instead of just before the first one as in C++ (Haven't done much Java, forgive me if I recall the details wrong).

Somewhat related. when Java was designed, the designer (James Gosling I believe) claimed that programmers were too stupid to understand the difference between signed and unsigned math (despite often several years of university education) and removed signed math entirely from the language. The impact is that when unsigned math is required, you are forced to conversions and library solutions. Not ideal when an HW APIs deals with unsigned numbers for example.

On Saturday, 7 August 2021 at 12:15:15 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

Programmers are humans that write programs. I've surely written more than a million lines of code in my life (who knows how much, but that's definitely a lower bound) and I did not study unsigned math in college. I took one programming class and I've done a lot of independent study. Maybe I could figure out how to work with unsigned math, but why would I want to? I have better things to do with my time.

But set all that aside. Anyone that's taught a university class will agree that you can't assume someone understands something just because they attended a lecture and took a test over it.

I don't necessarily disagree that there are some cases of overly restrictive language design. I didn't last very long with Go for that reason. I just think unsigned math is not the best example. Switching to safe by default would be a better example.

This is a general discussion which applies to all computer languages and also under several decades. What I have observed is that language designers see programmers misuse the language and introduce possible bugs and therefore remove features in languages. An analogy would limit the functionality of cars because people sometimes are involved in accidents, like automatic speed limiter (soon to be law in several countries).

Language designers seem to have a big brother attitude towards programmers and think they will save the world by introducing limitations.

Examples.

Array indexes should be signed instead of unsigned because somehow programmers mess up loops among other things. Bjarne Stroustrup considered his unsigned index to be a historic mistake. While unsigned array indexes make perfectly sense, the bias towards signed seems to be that programmers are stupid. The question is, if can't make a for loop with unsigned math, shouldn't you look for another job?

Somewhat related. when Java was designed, the designer (James Gosling I believe) claimed that programmers were too stupid to understand the difference between signed and unsigned math (despite often several years of university education) and removed signed math entirely from the language. The impact is that when unsigned math is required, you are forced to conversions and library solutions. Not ideal when an HW APIs deals with unsigned numbers for example.

The question is, do you think language designers go to far when trying to "save" programmers from misuse or not?
Do you think there can be approaches that both prevent bugs at the same time do not limit the language?

Isn't unsigned math exist because we are limited in how many bits the number can hold? There's no concept of signed/unsigned for float/double/real. Which one is simpler that would introduce less complexity for the programmer writing code?

However, I do know of cases that have gone too far. Like Swift eliminating for loops -- that one stung.

-Steve