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wtd

Fri Oct 20, 2006 11:30 am


What do easy data structures do to the programmer?

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Disclaimer: no, not all of the languages mentioned here are, strictly speaking, functional programming languages.  However, I believe that in the context of this topic, they are at least functional-ish.

But I digress...

How does it affect the habits and priorities of a programmer, when that programmer is given the ability to easily construct data structures?

Consider creating a list/array...

O'Caml

[1; 2; 3]

SML, Ruby, Python, Haskell, Perl, Erlang

[1, 2, 3]

Lisp/Scheme

'(1 2 3)

Now, I don't want to spend a lot of time writing code here.  I want a discussion.  :)

So...  discuss!


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rdrake

Fri Oct 20, 2006 11:33 am



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I'd say it lets them write code faster and easier.

As for affecting habits, it shouldn't do anything in a bad way.  It may make them lazier, but name a programmer that isn't lazy.


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Tony

Fri Oct 20, 2006 3:04 pm



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I'm amazed by the ease of datastructures with Ruby's YAML  Hash

I can easily create/save/load/change structure, all on the fly, with minimal effort.

Habbits? I don't know.. I suppose it's becomes so much easier to change the structure to fit your code, rather than code to fit an existing structure :lol: