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There has been much fuss about dynamically vs. statically typed languages. To my eye, however, while statically typed languages enable the compiler (or interpreter) to know a bit more about your intentions, they only barely scratch the surface of what could be conveyed. Indeed, some languages have an orthogonal mechanism for providing a bit more information in annotations.
I am aware of strongly typed languages like Agda and Coq that are very persnickety about what they allow you to do; I'm not terribly interested in those. Rather, I'm wondering what languages or theory exist that expand the richness of what you can explain to the compiler about what it is that you intend. For example, if you have a mutable vector and you turn it into a unit vector, why couldn't your compiler select a unit-vector form of vector projection instead of the more computationally expensive general form? The type has not changed--and the work required to build all the requisite types would be off-putting even in a language with amazingly easy typing such as Haskell--and yet it seems that the compiler could be empowered to know a great deal about the situation.
Does some language already enable things like this, either outside of standard type-theory or within one of its more advanced branches?
there are languages with turing-complete system type. which means that your types can express any computable property. for example list of length 6 or valid credit card number. however most mainstream languages uses simpler system types. haskell is considered to have very powerful system type
I'm making the transition from Java to PHP/Javascript and discovering all the practical aspects of using a weakly typed language.
As I'm in a position to fully compare the two I'd like to know the pros and cons of each approach. Also, are there any other forms of typing out there?
A weakly dynamically typed programming language (like PHP) made that the programmer's mistakes occur as non-coherent behaviours (for instance, the program gonna display stupid informations).
With a strongly dynamically typed language (like python), the programming mistakes causes error message. It makes the mistakes easier to uncover and diagnosis but in general the program became not usable after the message has been shown.
Finally, with a strongly statically typed language (like Java, Ada, OCaml, Haskell, ...) some mistakes can be uncovered at compile time and hence reduce the risk to provide an bugged program. (but the release occurs later)
Yes. Python uses Dynamic Typing.
Generally it's a matter of personal preference and the role that the architects of a given language's intended use.
PHP (a scripting language) for example makes sense to be weakly typed, as the tasks it generally performs are far less complex, and require less constraints then say a compiled language.
Regarding your final question, Mathematica is said to be "typeless."
High-level, typeless, dynamic language with consistent symbolic syntax and semantics across all data, functions, and interfaces
PHP/javascript can be used to develope better looking UI's than Java. PHP will be having less constraints and easy to learn and execute than java.
This question already has answers here:
What is the difference between a framework and a library? [closed]
(22 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
What is the difference between a Framework, a Toolkit and a Library?
The most important difference, and in fact the defining difference between a library and a framework is Inversion of Control.
What does this mean? Well, it means that when you call a library, you are in control. But with a framework, the control is inverted: the framework calls you. (This is called the Hollywood Principle: Don't call Us, We'll call You.) This is pretty much the definition of a framework. If it doesn't have Inversion of Control, it's not a framework. (I'm looking at you, .NET!)
Basically, all the control flow is already in the framework, and there's just a bunch of predefined white spots that you can fill out with your code.
A library on the other hand is a collection of functionality that you can call.
I don't know if the term toolkit is really well defined. Just the word "kit" seems to suggest some kind of modularity, i.e. a set of independent libraries that you can pick and choose from. What, then, makes a toolkit different from just a bunch of independent libraries? Integration: if you just have a bunch of independent libraries, there is no guarantee that they will work well together, whereas the libraries in a toolkit have been designed to work well together – you just don't have to use all of them.
But that's really just my interpretation of the term. Unlike library and framework, which are well-defined, I don't think that there is a widely accepted definition of toolkit.
Martin Fowler discusses the difference between a library and a framework in his article on Inversion of Control:
Inversion of Control is a key part of
what makes a framework different to a
library. A library is essentially a
set of functions that you can call,
these days usually organized into
classes. Each call does some work and
returns control to the client.
A framework embodies some abstract
design, with more behavior built in.
In order to use it you need to insert
your behavior into various places in
the framework either by subclassing or
by plugging in your own classes. The
framework's code then calls your code
at these points.
To summarize: your code calls a library but a framework calls your code.
Diagram
If you are a more visual learner, here is a diagram that makes it clearer:
(Credits: http://tom.lokhorst.eu/2010/09/why-libraries-are-better-than-frameworks)
The answer provided by Barrass is probably the most complete. However, the explanation could easily be stated more clearly. Most people miss the fact that these are all nested concepts. So let me lay it out for you.
When writing code:
eventually you discover sections of code that you're repeating in your program, so you refactor those into Functions/Methods.
eventually, after having written a few programs, you find yourself copying functions you already made into new programs. To save yourself time you bundle those functions into Libraries.
eventually you find yourself creating the same kind of user interfaces every time you make use of certain libraries. So you refactor your work and create a Toolkit that allows you to create your UIs more easily from generic method calls.
eventually, you've written so many apps that use the same toolkits and libraries that you create a Framework that has a generic version of this boilerplate code already provided so all you need to do is design the look of the UI and handle the events that result from user interaction.
Generally speaking, this completely explains the differences between the terms.
Introduction
There are various terms relating to collections of related code, which have both historical (pre-1994/5 for the purposes of this answer) and current implications, and the reader should be aware of both, particularly when reading classic texts on computing/programming from the historic era.
Library
Both historically, and currently, a library is a collection of code relating to a specific task, or set of closely related tasks which operate at roughly the same level of abstraction. It generally lacks any purpose or intent of its own, and is intended to be used by (consumed) and integrated with client code to assist client code in executing its tasks.
Toolkit
Historically, a toolkit is a more focused library, with a defined and specific purpose. Currently, this term has fallen out of favour, and is used almost exclusively (to this author's knowledge) for graphical widgets, and GUI components in the current era. A toolkit will most often operate at a higher layer of abstraction than a library, and will often consume and use libraries itself. Unlike libraries, toolkit code will often be used to execute the task of the client code, such as building a window, resizing a window, etc. The lower levels of abstraction within a toolkit are either fixed, or can themselves be operated on by client code in a proscribed manner. (Think Window style, which can either be fixed, or which could be altered in advance by client code.)
Framework
Historically, a framework was a suite of inter-related libraries and modules which were separated into either 'General' or 'Specific' categories. General frameworks were intended to offer a comprehensive and integrated platform for building applications by offering general functionality, such as cross platform memory management, multi-threading abstractions, dynamic structures (and generic structures in general). Historical general frameworks (Without dependency injection, see below) have almost universally been superseded by polymorphic templated (parameterised) packaged language offerings in OO languages, such as the STL for C++, or in packaged libraries for non-OO languages (guaranteed Solaris C headers). General frameworks operated at differing layers of abstraction, but universally low level, and like libraries relied on the client code carrying out it's specific tasks with their assistance.
'Specific' frameworks were historically developed for single (but often sprawling) tasks, such as "Command and Control" systems for industrial systems, and early networking stacks, and operated at a high level of abstraction and like toolkits were used to carry out execution of the client codes tasks.
Currently, the definition of a framework has become more focused and taken on the "Inversion of Control" principle as mentioned elsewhere as a guiding principle, so program flow, as well as execution is carried out by the framework. Frameworks are still however targeted either towards a specific output; an application for a specific OS for example (MFC for MS Windows for example), or for more general purpose work (Spring framework for example).
SDK: "Software Development Kit"
An SDK is a collection of tools to assist the programmer to create and deploy code/content which is very specifically targeted to either run on a very particular platform or in a very particular manner. An SDK can consist of simply a set of libraries which must be used in a specific way only by the client code and which can be compiled as normal, up to a set of binary tools which create or adapt binary assets to produce its (the SDK's) output.
Engine
An Engine (In code collection terms) is a binary which will run bespoke content or process input data in some way. Game and Graphics engines are perhaps the most prevalent users of this term, and are almost universally used with an SDK to target the engine itself, such as the UDK (Unreal Development Kit) but other engines also exist, such as Search engines and RDBMS engines.
An engine will often, but not always, allow only a few of its internals to be accessible to its clients. Most often to either target a different architecture, change the presentation of the output of the engine, or for tuning purposes. Open Source Engines are by definition open to clients to change and alter as required, and some propriety engines are fixed completely. The most often used engines in the world however, are almost certainly JavaScript Engines. Embedded into every browser everywhere, there are a whole host of JavaScript engines which will take JavaScript as an input, process it, and then output to render.
API: "Application Programming Interface"
The final term I am answering is a personal bugbear of mine: API, was historically used to describe the external interface of an application or environment which, itself was capable of running independently, or at least of carrying out its tasks without any necessary client intervention after initial execution. Applications such as Databases, Word Processors and Windows systems would expose a fixed set of internal hooks or objects to the external interface which a client could then call/modify/use, etc to carry out capabilities which the original application could carry out. API's varied between how much functionality was available through the API, and also, how much of the core application was (re)used by the client code. (For example, a word processing API may require the full application to be background loaded when each instance of the client code runs, or perhaps just one of its linked libraries; whereas a running windowing system would create internal objects to be managed by itself and pass back handles to the client code to be utilised instead.
Currently, the term API has a much broader range, and is often used to describe almost every other term within this answer. Indeed, the most common definition applied to this term is that an API offers up a contracted external interface to another piece of software (Client code to the API). In practice this means that an API is language dependent, and has a concrete implementation which is provided by one of the above code collections, such as a library, toolkit, or framework.
To look at a specific area, protocols, for example, an API is different to a protocol which is a more generic term representing a set of rules, however an individual implementation of a specific protocol/protocol suite that exposes an external interface to other software would most often be called an API.
Remark
As noted above, historic and current definitions of the above terms have shifted, and this can be seen to be down to advances in scientific understanding of the underlying computing principles and paradigms, and also down to the emergence of particular patterns of software. In particular, the GUI and Windowing systems of the early nineties helped to define many of these terms, but since the effective hybridisation of OS Kernel and Windowing system for mass consumer operating systems (bar perhaps Linux), and the mass adoption of dependency injection/inversion of control as a mechanism to consume libraries and frameworks, these terms have had to change their respective meanings.
P.S. (A year later)
After thinking carefully about this subject for over a year I reject the IoC principle as the defining difference between a framework and a library. There ARE a large number of popular authors who say that it is, but there are an almost equal number of people who say that it isn't. There are simply too many 'Frameworks' out there which DO NOT use IoC to say that it is the defining principle. A search for embedded or micro controller frameworks reveals a whole plethora which do NOT use IoC and I now believe that the .NET language and CLR is an acceptable descendant of the "general" framework. To say that IoC is the defining characteristic is simply too rigid for me to accept I'm afraid, and rejects out of hand anything putting itself forward as a framework which matches the historical representation as mentioned above.
For details of non-IoC frameworks, see, as mentioned above, many embedded and micro frameworks, as well as any historical framework in a language that does not provide callback through the language (OK. Callbacks can be hacked for any device with a modern register system, but not by the average programmer), and obviously, the .NET framework.
A library is simply a collection of methods/functions wrapped up into a package that can be imported into a code project and re-used.
A framework is a robust library or collection of libraries that provides a "foundation" for your code. A framework follows the Inversion of Control pattern. For example, the .NET framework is a large collection of cohesive libraries in which you build your application on top of. You can argue there isn't a big difference between a framework and a library, but when people say "framework" it typically implies a larger, more robust suite of libraries which will play an integral part of an application.
I think of a toolkit the same way I think of an SDK. It comes with documentation, examples, libraries, wrappers, etc. Again, you can say this is the same as a framework and you would probably be right to do so.
They can almost all be used interchangeably.
very, very similar, a framework is usually a bit more developed and complete then a library, and a toolkit can simply be a collection of similar librarys and frameworks.
a really good question that is maybe even the slightest bit subjective in nature, but I believe that is about the best answer I could give.
Library
I think it's unanimous that a library is code already coded that you can use so as not to have to code it again. The code must be organized in a way that allows you to look up the functionality you want and use it from your own code.
Most programming languages come with standard libraries, especially some code that implements some kind of collection. This is always for the convenience that you don't have to code these things yourself. Similarly, most programming languages have construct to allow you to look up functionality from libraries, with things like dynamic linking, namespaces, etc.
So code that finds itself often needed to be re-used is great code to be put inside a library.
Toolkit
A set of tools used for a particular purpose. This is unanimous. The question is, what is considered a tool and what isn't. I'd say there's no fixed definition, it depends on the context of the thing calling itself a toolkit. Example of tools could be libraries, widgets, scripts, programs, editors, documentation, servers, debuggers, etc.
Another thing to note is the "particular purpose". This is always true, but the scope of the purpose can easily change based on who made the toolkit. So it can easily be a programmer's toolkit, or it can be a string parsing toolkit. One is so broad, it could have tool touching everything programming related, while the other is more precise.
SDKs are generally toolkits, in that they try and bundle a set of tools (often of multiple kind) into a single package.
I think the common thread is that a tool does something for you, either completely, or it helps you do it. And a toolkit is simply a set of tools which all perform or help you perform a particular set of activities.
Framework
Frameworks aren't quite as unanimously defined. It seems to be a bit of a blanket term for anything that can frame your code. Which would mean: any structure that underlies or supports your code.
This implies that you build your code against a framework, whereas you build a library against your code.
But, it seems that sometimes the word framework is used in the same sense as toolkit or even library. The .Net Framework is mostly a toolkit, because it's composed of the FCL which is a library, and the CLR, which is a virtual machine. So you would consider it a toolkit to C# development on Windows. Mono being a toolkit for C# development on Linux. Yet they called it a framework. It makes sense to think of it this way too, since it kinds of frame your code, but a frame should more support and hold things together, then do any kind of work, so my opinion is this is not the way you should use the word.
And I think the industry is trying to move into having framework mean an already written program with missing pieces that you must provide or customize. Which I think is a good thing, since toolkit and library are great precise terms for other usages of "framework".
Framework: installed on you machine and allowing you to interact with it. without the framework you can't send programming commands to your machine
Library: aims to solve a certain problem (or several problems related to the same category)
Toolkit: a collection of many pieces of code that can solve multiple problems on multiple issues (just like a toolbox)
It's a little bit subjective I think. The toolkit is the easiest. It's just a bunch of methods, classes that can be use.
The library vs the framework question I make difference by the way to use them. I read somewhere the perfect answer a long time ago. The framework calls your code, but on the other hand your code calls the library.
In relation with the correct answer from Mittag:
a simple example. Let's say you implement the ISerializable interface (.Net) in one of your classes. You make use of the framework qualities of .Net then, rather than it's library qualities. You fill in the "white spots" (as mittag said) and you have the skeleton completed. You must know in advance how the framework is going to "react" with your code. Actually .net IS a framework, and here is where i disagree with the view of Mittag.
The full, complete answer to your question is given very lucidly in Chapter 19 (the whole chapter devoted to just this theme) of this book, which is a very good book by the way (not at all "just for Smalltalk").
Others have noted that .net may be both a framework and a library and a toolkit depending on which part you use but perhaps an example helps. Entity Framework for dealing with databases is a part of .net that does use the inversion of control pattern. You let it know your models it figures out what to do with them. As a programmer it requires you to understand "the mind of the framework", or more realistically the mind of the designer and what they are going to do with your inputs. datareader and related calls, on the other hand, are simply a tool to go get or put data to and from table/view and make it available to you. It would never understand how to take a parent child relationship and translate it from object to relational, you'd use multiple tools to do that. But you would have much more control on how that data was stored, when, transactions, etc.
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As a programmer, I often look at some features of the language I'm currently using and think to myself "This is pretty hard to do for a programmer, and could be taken care of automatically by the machine".
One example of such a feature is memory management, which has been automatic for a while in a variety of languages. While memory management is not that hard to do manually most of the time, doing it perfectly all the way through your application without leaking memory is extremely hard. Automation has made it easy again so that we programmers could concentrate on more critical questions.
Are there any features that you think programming languages should automate because the reward/difficulty ratio is just too low (say, for example concurrency)?
This question is intended to be a brainstorm about what the future of programming could be like, and what languages could do for us to let us focus on more important tasks, so please post your wishes even if you don't think automation is practical/feasible. Good answers will point to stuff that is genuinely hard to do in many languages, as opposed to single-language pet-peeves.
Whatever the language can do for me automatically, I will want a way of doing for myself.
Concurrent programming/parallelism that is (semi-)automated, opposed to having to mess around with threads, callbacks, and synchronisation. Being able to parallelise for loops, such as:
Parallel.ForEach(fooList, item =>
{
item.PerformLongTask();
}
is just made of win.
Certain languages already support such functionality to a degree, however. Notably, F# has asynchronous workflows. Coming with the release of .NET 4.0, the Parallel Extensions library will make concurrency much easier in C# and VB.NET. I believe Python also has some sort of concurrency library, though I personally haven't used it.
What would also be cool is fully automated parallelism in purely functional languages, i.e. not having to change your code even slightly and automatically have it run near optimally across multiple cores. Note that this can only be done with purely functional languages (such as Haskell, but not CAML/F#). Still, constructs such as example given above would be very handy for automating parallelism in object-oriented and other languages.
I would imagine that libraries, design patterns, and even entire programming languages oriented towards simple and high-level support for parallelism will become increasingly widespread in the near future, as desktop computers start to move from 2 cores to 4 and then 8 cores and the advantage of automated concurrency becomes much more evident.
exec("Build a system to keep the customer happy, based on requirements.txt");
In Java, create beans less verbosely.
For example:
bean Student
{
String name;
int id;
type1 property1;
type2 property2;
}
and this would create a bean private fields, default accessors, toString, hashCode, equals, etc.
In Java I would like a keyword that would make the entire class immutable.
E.g.
public immutable class Xyz {
}
And the compiler would warn me if any conditions of immutability were broken.
Concurrency. That was my main idea when asking this question. This is going to get more and more important with time, since current CPUs already have up to 8 logical cores (4 cores + hyperthreading), and 12 logical cores will appear in a few months. In the future, we are going to have a hell of a lot of cores at our disposal, but most programing languages only make it easy for us to use one at a time.
The Threads + Synchronization model that is exposed by most programming languages is extremely low level, and very close to what the CPU does. To me, the current level of concurrency language support is roughly equivalent to the memory management support in C: Not integrated, but some things can be delegated to the OS (malloc, free).
I wish some language would come up with a suitable abstraction that either makes the Threads + Synchronization model easier, or that simply completely hides it for us (just as automatic memory management make good old malloc/free obsolete in Java).
Some functional languages such as Erlang have a reputation of having good multithreading support, but the brain-switch required to do functional programming doesn't really make the whole ordeal much easier.
.Net:
A warning when manipulating strings with methods such as Replace and not returning the value (new string) to a variable, because if you don't know that a string is immutable this issue will frustrate you.
In C++, type inference for variable declarations, so that I don't need to write
for (vector<some_longwinded_type>::const_iterator i = v.begin(); i != v.end(); ++i) {
...
}
Luckily this is coming in C++1x in the form of auto:
for (auto i = v.begin(); i != v.end(); ++i) {
...
}
Coffee. I mean the language is call Java - so it should be able to make my coffee! I hate getting up from programming, going to the coffee pot, and finding out someone from marketing has taken the last cup and not made another pot.
Persistence, it seems to me we write far too much code to deal with persistence when this really should be a configuration problem.
In C++, enum-to-string.
In Ada, the language defines the 'image attribute of an enumerated type as a function that returns a string corresponding to the textual representation of an enumeration value.
C++ provides no such clean facility. It takes several lines of very arcane preprocessor macro black magic to get a rough equivalent.
For languages that provide operator overloading, provide automatically generated overloads for symmetric operations when only one operation is defined. For example, if the programmer provides an equality operator but not an inequality operator, the language could easily generate one. In C++, the same could be done for copy constructors and assignment operators.
I think that automatically generating one-side of a symmetric operation would be nice. Of course, I would definitely want to be able to explicitly say don't do that when needed. I guess providing the implementation of both sides with one of them being private and empty could do the job.
Everything that LINQ does. C# has spoiled me and I now find it hard to do anything with collections in any other language. In Python I use list comprehensions a lot, but they are not quite as powerful as LINQ. I haven't found any other language that makes working with collections as easy as in C#.
In Visual Studio environment I want "Remove unused usings" to run across all file in the project. I find it a significant loss of time to have to manually open each individual file and call this operation of a file basis.
From a dynamic languages perspective, I'd like to see better tool support. Steve Yegge has a great post on this. For instance, there are lots of cases where a tool could look inside various code paths and determine if the methods or functions existed and provide the equivalent of the compiler smoke test. Obviously, if you're using lots and lots of truly dynamic code, this won't work, but the fact is, you probably aren't, so it would be pretty nice if Python, for instance, would tell you that .ToLowerCase() wasn't a valid function at compile time, rather than waiting until you hit the else clause.
s = "a Mixed Case String"
if True:
s = s.lower()
else:
s = s.ToLowerCase()
Easy: initialize variables in C/C++ just like C# does. It would have saved me multiple sessions of debugging in other people's code.
Of course there would be a keyword when you specifically do not want to init a var.
noinit float myVal; // undefined
float my2ndVal; // 0.0f
I am attempting to determine prior art for the following idea:
1) user types in some code in a language called (insert_name_here);
2) user chooses a destination language from a list of well-known output candidates (javascript, ruby, perl, python);
3) the processor translates insert_name_here into runnable code in destination language;
4) the processor then runs the code using the relevant system call based on the chosen language
The reason this works is because there is a pre-established 1 to 1 mapping between all language constructs from insert_name_here to all supported destination languages.
(Disclaimer: This obviously does not produce "elegant" code that is well-tailored to the destination language. It simply does a rudimentary translation that is runnable. The purpose is to allow developers to get a quick-and-dirty implementation of algorithms in several different languages for those cases where they do not feel like re-inventing the wheel, but are required for whatever reason to work with a specific language on a specific project.)
Does this already exist?
The .NET CLR is designed such that C++.Net, C#.Net, and VB.Net all compile to the same machine language, and you can "decompile" that CLI back in to any one of those languages.
So yes, I would say it already exists though not exactly as you describe.
There are converters available for different languages. The problem you are going to have is dealing with libraries. While mapping between language statements might be easy, finding mappings between library functions will be very difficult.
I'm not really sure how useful that type of code generator would be. Why would you want to write something in one language and then immediately convert it to something else? I can see the rationale for 4th Gen languages that convert diagrams or models into code but I don't really see the point of your effort.
Yes, a program that transform a program from one representation to another does exist. It's called a "compiler".
And as to your question whether that is always possible: as long as your target language is at least as powerful as the source language, then it is possible. So, if your target language is Turing-complete, then it is always possible, because there can be no language that is more powerful than a Turing-complete language.
However, there does not need to be a dumb 1:1 mapping.
For example: the Microsoft Volta compiler which compiles CIL bytecode to JavaScript sourcecode has a problem: .NET has threads, JavaScript doesn't. But you can implement threads with continuations. Well, JavaScript doesn't have continuations either, but you can implement continuations with exceptions. So, Volta transforms the CIL to CPS and then implements CPS with exceptions. (Newer versions of JavaScript have semi-coroutines in the form of generators; those could also be used, but Volta is intended to work across a wide range of JavaScript versions, including obviously JScript in Internet Explorer.)
This seems a little bizarre. If you're using the term "prior art" in its most common form, you're discussing a potentially patentable idea. If that is the case, you have:
1/ Published the idea, starting the clock running on patent filing - I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you're based in the U.S. Other jurisdictions may have other rules.
2/ Told the entire planet your idea, which means it's pretty much useless to try and patent it, unless you act very fast.
If you're not thinking about patenting this and were just using the term "prior art" in a laypersons sense, I apologize. I work for a company that takes patents very seriously and it's drilled into us, in great detail, what we're allowed to do with information before filing.
Having said that, patentable ideas must be novel, useful and non-obvious. I would think that your idea would not pass on the third of these since you're describing a language translator which would have the prior art of the many pascal-to-c and fortran-to-c converters out there.
The one glimmer of hope would be the ability of your idea to generate one of multiple output languages (which p2c and f2c don't do) but I think even that would be covered by the likes of cross compilers (such as gcc) which turn source into one of many different object languages.
IBM has a product called Visual Age Generator in which you code in one (proprietary) language and it's converted into COBOL/C/Java/others to run on different target platforms from PCs to the big honkin' System z mainframes, so there's your first problem (thinking about patenting an idea that IBM, the biggest patenter in the world, is already using).
Tons of them. p2c, f2c, and the original implementation s of C++ and Objective C strike me immediately. Beyond that, it's kind of hard to distinguish what you're describing from any compiler, especially for us old guys whose compilers generated ASM code for an intermediate represetation anyway.