closures after all?

[Tim Peierls]

On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Reinier Zwitserloot <
reinier at zwitserloot.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 6:24 AM, Tim Peierls <tim at peierls.net> wrote:
> [in response to Neal's argument that writing libraries is hard already]
>
>
>> The addition of function types would raise the threshold of expertise
>> required to do a good job, making that small percentage even smaller.
>
>
> I'm not sure that argument actually works in practice. One of the skills
> needed when writing libraries is making sure that the library tries to make
> the job that HAS to be done by the user of the library as easy as possible.
> Sometimes this requires some _very_ creative design, such as coming up with
> something like the builder pattern. Having the ability to use function types
> may actually alleviate the need to come up with, say, the 80 hook interfaces
> that ParallelArrays defines, making the job easier instead of harder.
>

Adding a language feature *does* open the door to new possibilities, but the
designer's job *is* harder because now you have to evaluate the benefits and
costs of using existing features in creative ways vs. taking advantage of
these new possibilities. It's not enough to observe that an approach based
on new features is more appealing to expert users (more elegant, say, or
more compact) than one that is not -- a feature wouldn't get far if it
didn't appeal to experts. But the API designer has to be sensitive to the
consequences of using new language features for all users, not just the
experts. The pool of good designers possessing that kind of sensitivity is
necessarily smaller than the one that doesn't have to worry about new
language features; the latter have less to do.

How do you know if you belong to that smaller pool? I don't know (and I
don't claim membership), but I bet self-nomination is not a guarantee. ;-)

And again, I think too many folks are taking it on faith that ParallelArray
with function types would be vastly superior to ParallelArray with named
interfaces. I'm not at all convinced -- in fact, my limited experience
suggests otherwise. A year (two years?) ago, I had what I (naturally)
thought was an efficient and externally attractive way to drastically reduce
the number of named interfaces needed for ParallelArray. Doug Lea didn't
like it, but it's possible I didn't describe it well to him. :-) Maybe I can
dust it off and try again.

--tim