language-design Archives

Java, Programming

IT Nursery

Why are arrays covariant but generics are invariant?

From Effective Java by Joshua Bloch, Arrays differ from generic type in two important ways. First arrays are covariant. Generics are invariant. Covariant ...

June 3, 2022
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Java, Programming

IT Nursery

Why is an array not assignable to Iterable?

with Java5 we can write: Foo...

June 2, 2022
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C#, Programming

IT Nursery

Why can’t I have abstract static methods in C#?

I’ve been working with providers a fair bit lately, and I came across an interesting situation where I wanted to have an abstract ...

June 1, 2022
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How does “this” keyword work within a function?

I just came across an interesting situation in JavaScript. I have a class with a method that defines several objects using object-literal notation. ...

May 22, 2022
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What blocks Ruby, Python to get Javascript V8 speed? [closed]

Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers. Closed 7 years ago. Locked. This question and its ...

May 21, 2022
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Function overloading by return type?

Why don’t more mainstream statically typed languages support function/method overloading by return type? I can’t think of any that do. It seems no ...

May 20, 2022
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Benefits of prototypal inheritance over classical?

So I finally stopped dragging my feet all these years and decided to learn JavaScript “properly”. One of the most head-scratching elements of ...

May 18, 2022
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What does DIM stand for in Visual Basic and BASIC?

What does Dim stand for in Visual Basic? 10 Answers 10

May 17, 2022
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Why doesn’t Python have a sign function?

I can’t understand why Python doesn’t have a sign function. It has an abs builtin (which I consider sign‘s sister), but no sign. ...

May 16, 2022
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Why must we define both == and != in C#?

The C# compiler requires that whenever a custom type defines operator ==, it must also define != (see here). Why? I’m curious to ...

May 11, 2022
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