My Experience with Primitive Patterns

[David Alayachew]

Hello Amber Dev,

I just wanted to post my experience with using Primitive Patterns when
trying it out in a non-trivial project.

First off, one of the things that stood out to me immediately is how little
effort it became to isolate and properly handle edge cases. Previously, if
I wanted to provide a validation for all the different ways that this int
could be wrong, I would need a separate if statement or a library.
Typically, I would just group all of my checks into a single if check or
boolean, leading to error prone-code. But now, just a simple when clause on
a switch. Then, just throw on the right hand side for the bad cases, and
return itself on the good cases. My validation code was easier to work with.

Another thing that I DEEPLY appreciated was the exhaustiveness checking for
boolean. That made a lot of my code a lot more explicit, which I
appreciated. Granted, it ended up being more verbose, but I don't mind
verbosity.

One minor annoyance, this one error message was a bit difficult to follow
without looking things up.

error: duplicate unconditional pattern

This error threw me for a loop when I first saw it. I NOW know it is
exactly what it means (after having done the necessary research from the
amber docs), but the error message could do with a bit more context. Maybe
clarify which case is the duplicate? If that's a hard thing to do, then no
worries. I only raise this issue in case the assumption is that the average
Java programmer will look at that error and have a good idea of what it
means without doing a non-trivial amount of reading.

Honestly, there's not much else to write. It all just worked. I will give
Primitive Patterns another test in the future, once I have time.

Thank you all for your time and attention.
David Alayachew
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