But while trying out some things and learning the language I find it annoying. And I don't know how it makes me more disciplined when I can just write `_ = unused;` to suppress the error. Even worse, if I forget that assignment in the code the compiler will never warn me about it again even when I want it to.
So far I haven't seen any upside to this.
I wrote a 16kloc Zig project a couple of months ago, and not once the 'unused variables are errors' thing was annoying (https://floooh.github.io/2024/08/24/zig-and-emulators.html)
IME unused variables being (linter) errors also isn't all that unusual in the Javascript/Typescript world. It feels 'normal' fairly quickly.
> I wrote a 16kloc Zig project a couple of months ago, and not once the 'unused variables are errors' thing was annoying
That's great, but different people are different. I've tried learning Zig twice by now but this is just a dealbreaker, simple as that.
My workflow is probably very different from yours I'm guessing. I have my editor configured to save on every keystroke and I have a watch process that then recompiles my code. I pretty much never manually compile. My compiler is sufficiently fast that I almost never wait more than 1 second to build and run my code. I notice every error immediately and fix them as they arise. This is what I am talking about with discipline. I never allow my code to get into an unexpectedly broken state and don't need a linter since I just make the compiler as strict as I would make the linter. This ultimately simplifies both the compiler and the build pipeline.
These are all huge upsides for me. The cost of occasionally deleting a definition and then restoring it are for me minor compared to the cost of, say, writing a separate linter or adding feature flags to the compiler (the latter of which doesn't fit into my workflow anyway since I auto compile).
a = input()
b = f(a)
c = g(b)
d = h(c)
- comment it out
- use git
- use ctrl-z
Maybe 1/6 if you're debugging.
In theory, programmers can just be disciplined enough or set up CI lints for unused imports. In practice…
we accept type inference but don't do the same for module references? why?
pike does have an import statement, but its effect is to include all members of a module into the namespace instead of just resolving the ones that are really used. and instead of speeding things up, using import on modules with lots of members may actually slow things down because the namespace is loaded up with lots of unused references. sometimes import is used to help readability, but that's rarely needed because you can solve the same with a simple assignment to a variable.
if you can show me an example where import resolves an ambiguity, i'll try to show how pike solves the problem without import.
In C++, you have to #include the thing you want to use somewhere, not necessarily in the same file you use it, it just has to end up in the same compilation unit. If two files define the same name, you'll end up with a compilation error. In very large projects, sometimes you won't notice this until some transitive dependency includes the other thing.
I'm personally a fan of explicit imports. I imagine this helps IDEs resolve references without having to scan 1000s of files to resolve them, and it helps build tools pull in only the needed files. Regarding speed (of execution), in JS we have tree-shaking so if you import a file but don't use all of its members, those excess/used members will be dropped from the final bundle (saving on both bundle size and run-time parsing). Plus it means I don't have to spend much time thinking of a super/globally unique name for every thing I define.
import math
foo = math.pi
pike can.
And how does this work in practice? In Python and JS you can also put executable code inside your modules that gets executed the first time it's imported. Are you telling me that that's going to run the first time it's implicitly imported instead? Is that a good idea?
The story in JS gets even crazier because you can do all kinds of whacky things with imports, like hooking up "loaders" so you can import things that aren't even JavaScript (images, CSS, you name it), or you can modify the resolution algorithm.
depends on the language, in pike, and as far as i know in python i still can use it as a variable if i want to, it would just cover the module and make the real datetime inaccessible. but why would i want to do that? if i see someone using a well known module name as a variable in python i would probably recommend changing it.
i don't see the benefit of not filling the global namespace over making import unneeded. add to that, by convention in pike module names start with an uppercase letter, and variables don't, so the overlap is going to be extremely small and never causes any issues.
In Python and JS you can also put executable code inside your modules that gets executed the first time it's imported
pike doesn't have that feature. if there is something to be initialized you'd have to call it explicitly. i don't see a problem with that, because in python you call import explicitly too. so you just swap out one need to be explicit for another. i prefer the pike way because it actually gives me more control over if and when that initialization happens.
i think that also better fits the paradigm of explicit is better than implicit. in python i have to learn which module does initialize stuff or ignore it, in pike i can easily see it from the way it is used.
further in pike to get an initialization i would normally create an instance of a class in the module because modules are singletons, and you probably don't want to change something in them globally.
going to run the first time it's implicitly imported instead
pike is compiled, that is, all these references are resolved first, before any code is run. so even if there were any implicit initialization it would be possible to run it first.
more specifically, pike modules are instantiated objects. i don't know the internals, but i believe they get first instantiated when they are resolved. again, that's before the rest of the code where the reference came from is running
Sure, saying "an open paren must have a matching close" is quantitatively different from "a def must have at least one matching ref", but is it really qualitatively different?