Comment by gavinking | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gavinking | Hacker News Reader

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I guess I don't understand what you're saying here. I was already aware of the concept of a constructor, from years of Java. And I already had a set of really extremely tight design constraints in terms of the existing language syntax and semantics, including a set of principles about how the block structure of the language works, rules about definite initialization, the fact we don't have overloading, etc, etc, which are quite specific to _Ceylon_, and aren't found in other similar languages. These constraints were pretty much sufficient to fully determine the resulting design.

Furthermore, there was an issue open in Ceylon's issue tracker for almost 2 years, following on from discussions and proposals in two other issues that go back even further, and these issues were read and commented on by many of our community members, including some who have some Scala experience.

Now, if you could point to some cool idea in Scala that we obviously aren't aware of, and which could have improved the design of constructors in Ceylon, then I guess you would have a point. But it doesn't seem like you do have anything concrete, just a concern about _process_ rather than _outcome_.

And fundamentally I'm a guy who cares about outcome. And I think the outcome is rather excellent.

I think what they're saying is that it's good to give credit where credit is due.

Well since zero credit is due to Scala (read my post below where I utterly demolish the claim that Ceylon constructors are similar to Scala) then doesn't that seem like an utterly rude and obnoxious demand to you?

If that were the case, yes, but it isn't. There are obviously some differences but there are clearly also uncanny similarities.

Name the "uncanny" similarities please. If you can't, I might think you're trolling.

To be fair, it's nice to see you acknowledge that there are "obviously some differences". Some tiny little subtle differences like how in Ceylon, I can actually have two constructors that both initialize an immutable field. Like how constructor resolution is by (unambiguous) name and not by (potentially ambiguous) overloaded parameter types. Like how different constructors can delegate to distinct constructors of the superclass. 'Cos, y'know, other than that, it's really just a copy of Scala.

Absurd.

I assumed duaneb was referring to the whole idea of giving parameters to the class definition.

Wait, you're not talking about constructors here. You're talking about the idea of giving a class a parameter list? A feature that I independently came up with about 7 years ago, before I - or most other people - had even heard of Scala? And then implemented 5 years ago as one of like the very earliest features in the Ceylon type checker? And which is not actually the topic of the linked blog post? You're calling me out for copying that?!

Man, seriously, there is such a thing as two people coming up with the same good idea independently. If you can't imagine such a thing happening, I'm at a total loss.

Certainly, it happens all the time. Leibniz and Newton invented calculus at the same time. Scala is 12 years old though, and it's rare for a language designer to not be aware of the main competitor in the same space, which is probably why people assumed that you were aware of Scala.

Note that I personally couldn't care less who invented what, I just wrote what I thought duaneb and stephen were getting at to clear up the confusion since you said "I guess I don't understand what you're saying here."

I think in this thread you're conflating taking credit with mentioning, which are two very, very different concepts. I would not expect you to give credit, but I would expect you to mention relevant competing technologies for a compare and contrast. :)

If you look above in this subthread you'll see the following comment:

> I think what they're saying is that it's good to give credit where credit is due.

I don't think I was conflating. Or at least, if I misinterpreted, then so did at least one other person. Which suggests that the original comments were very open to such an interpretation.

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