Re: Reminder, blatant ad
Date: 4 Feb 2006 10:50:45 -0800
Message-ID: <1139079045.443585.323090_at_g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Jan Hidders wrote:
>
> I don't know who told you that lists are somehow only representation
> while sets are not, but that is nonsense.
I seem to remember a prominent troll from a few years ago who insisted that the only order that existed was logical order on the members of a set, and that anything else was necessarily implementational and had no value. I agree that this is nonsense.
> The reason to avoid lists is
> far more mundane and practical; it would make the DBMS more complex and
> make tasks such as query optimization, concurrency control and integrity
> maintenance harder. It would also make the theory more complex, which in
> the long term usually also translates into practical problems.
And yet.
While your concerns are of course good ones, I still stongly feel that
the lists-or-sets-but-not-both rut that the field has gotten into is
not
only a false dichotomy but a pernicious one. As a programmer, I want
both! I *insist* on both, and I don't want one implemented on top of
the other. Nor do I want my collection handling relegated to libraries;
collections are too fundamental not to be a direct part of the
language.
To me, SQL and the APL family are demonstrations of this. Death
to the for loop!
> Sure, bathing regularly is also not necessary. It's still a good idea
> though. :-)
On this point we agree. :-)
Marshall
PS. Or as is sometimes said, "we are in agreeance." Received on Sat Feb 04 2006 - 19:50:45 CET