Interesting. Thanks!
any new keyword could break backwards compatibility
Wouldn’t that happen anyway with variable and function names? Any type other than primitive/built in ones are usually camel case so lower case keywords are more likely to clash with single word variable and function names, unless you restrict the cases of those too or allow keyword overriding or something.
How do you do nested parameterized types without it becoming ambiguous though? That’s IMO the biggest advantage of the bracket syntax. For example: Map<Tuple<Int, Int, Int> Int>
TIL PHP has statics.
Also, does PHP actually enforce the type declarations? I’d assume it would but knowing PHP…
Doesn’t Basic use Dim?
It’s commonly used in math to declare variables so I assume programming languages borrowed it from there.
Or ACK
That’s the keepalive message for when there’s a delay in the data query to prevent the passengers from closing their connections.
Ah, so “out” is like an EOF!
The issue with AI is not that it’s not an impressive technology, it’s that it’s built on stolen data and is incredibly wasteful of resources. It’s a lot like cars in that regard, sure it solves some problems and is more convenient than the alternatives, but its harmful externalities vastly outweigh the benefits.
LLMs are amazing because they steal the amazing work of humans. Encyclopedias, scientific papers, open source projects, fiction, news, etc. Every time the LLM gets something right, it’s because a human figured it out, their work was published, and some company scraped it without permission. Yet it’s the LLM that gets the credit and not the person. Their very existence is unjust because they profit off humanity’s collective labour and give nothing in return.
No matter how good the technology is, if it’s made through unethical means, it doesn’t deserve to exist. You’re not entitled to AI more than content creators are entitled to their intellectual property.
Luckily Python is one step ahead:
Python 3.13.3 (main, Apr 22 2025, 00:00:00) [GCC 15.0.1 20250418 (Red Hat 15.0.1-0)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> if __name__ = "__main__":
...
... main()
...
File "<python-input-0>", line 1
if __name__ = "__main__":
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax. Maybe you meant '==' or ':=' instead of '='?
Heard of it, was too lazy to do it that way.
To be fair I now do it that way, but not when I was learning Python.
Basically, when you compile a program written in Rust or C/C++ (the first and second panels respectively), the compiler needs to know what’s supposed to be executed first when the program is run directly (i.e. when you click on the executable), which in these languages, is denoted by a special function called main()
. Executable files can also contain functions and data structures that can be called by other programs, and when they are, you wouldn’t want to run an entire complex and resource intensive program if another program only needs to call a single function from it. In that case, the other program will call the function it wants but not main, so only that function executes and not the entire program.
However, Python is a scripting language that’s interpreted. So every Python source file is executable provided you have the Python runtime. Python also doesn’t have native support for main functions in the same way Rust and C/C++ does, and it will execute every line of code as it reads the source file. This is why a single line Python file that just calls print is valid, it doesn’t need to be wrapped in a main function to execute. However, what if your Python file is both meant to be executed directly and provides functions that other Python files can call? If you just put the main routine in the root of the file, it would be executed every time another program tries to import the file in order to call functions from it, since the import causes the file to be interpreted and executed in its entirety. You can still just have a main function in your file, but since Python doesn’t natively support it, your main function won’t do anything if you run the file directly because as far as Python is concerned, there is no executable code at the root of the file and you haven’t called any functions.
The workaround is to have a single if statement at the root of the file that looks like this:
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
It checks a special variable called __name__
. If the Python file is directly executed, __name__
will have the value of the string '__main__'
, which satisfies the if statement so main() is called. If another Python file imports it, the value of __name__
will be the name of that file, so main() isn’t called. It’s clunky and not that efficient, but, 1, it works, and 2, if you cared about efficiency, you wouldn’t be writing it in Python.
Looks at all the Python scripts in my bin folder that I wrote.
Yeah fair enough now that I think more about it. IDK I just find the concept really cool so I included it.
When you write code for a “runtime” that wasn’t intended to run your code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dcj19KGKWM
deleted by creator
IDK I didn’t think that much into it lol
One thing that annoyed me about C# as a Java guy is that it really wants you to use camel case for function and property names, even private ones. I don’t like it specifically because it’s hard to differentiate between a function/property and a type.
But C# has quite a few keywords and seem to like adding them more than Java.
Maybe that’s their way of ensuring keywords don’t clash with stuff?