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whlr | karma 35 | avg karma 1.67 · 2020-03-12 16:04:28+00:00

> I find the latter easier to read and lends itself to a fluent, lightweight style.

Maybe I'm bikeshedding, but I think this is a nontrivial part of why people like OOP languages. Being able to read right to left, without nested parens, makes code comprehension easier.

I think the mathematical notation for function application has held programming languages back. I realize that there's a huge benefit to uniformity of syntax across languages, and that syntax is ultimately much less important than semantics, but I wish we could settle on something better than f(x). I really appreciate languages that are willing to do something different (e.g. haskell and lisp).

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smabie | karma 4907 | avg karma 1.76 · 2020-03-12 16:11:54+00:00

There's the pipe operator in a lot of languages (|>) to try and solve this problem, but it has always felt clunky to me. Compare:

f(g(h(x)))

x.h.g.f

x |> f |> g |> h

I think most people prefer the second one to all the rest.

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Udik | karma 2399 | avg karma 1.07 · 2020-03-12 18:15:34+00:00

I think the third example should be:

x |> h |> g |> f

Which is identical to the second, except for a more eloquent choice of the pipeline symbol?

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whlr | karma 35 | avg karma 1.67 · 2020-03-13 03:03:47

That is the version of the |> operator I'm familiar with from Julia.