So I have a teacher that when he use "C++" it is basically C with a .cpp file-extension and -O0 compiler flag.

Last assignment was to implement some arbitrary lengthy calculation with a tight requirement of max 1 second runtime, to force us to basically handroll C code without using std and any form of abstraction. But because the language didn’t freeze in time 1998, there is a little keyword named "constexpr" that folded all my classes, arrays, iterators, virtual methods, std::algorithms etc, into a single return statement. Thus making my code the fastest submitted.

Lesson of the story, use the language to the fullest and always turn on the damn optimizer

Ok now I’m done 😚

Been programmed to write the loop this way

How can a candidate have 10+ years or experience with C++ and let alone struggle with the most simple exercise!?

Thoughts from the inner me during an actual interview:

FOR FUCK SAKE, DUDE, PUT THAT "std::" IN FRONT OF YOUR "vector" AND IT WILL COMPILE!

USE ITERATORS GODDAMMIT INSTEAD OF THOSE FUCKING INDEXES. YOUR CODE IS FULL OF DAMN OVERFLOW ERRORS!

HAVE YOU EVER REALIZED THAT ARRAYS CAN BE EMPTY SOMETIMES?

Rust I think, it introduced me to using iterators and monads. I try to use them wherever I can, they're so cleeaan.

Should I be ashamed?
I hardly ever use "i" as a counter in for loops
I most likely use "k" and "j"; "i" stands for "index"

I always confuse `for..in` with `for..of` and have to look up their respective meaning. Again.

It drives me crazy.

Do you have any mnemonic on this? How do you remember the difference?

(Now, as in this very moment, I know that for..in is for looping over keys of an object and for..of for looping over iterators. But tomorrow I will have forgotten it again.)

Lua users, have you used moonscript?

It's a little language that has it's own interpreter or can be compiled down to Lua and it's absolutely lovely (currently using it with Love2d).

Of course, as with most things, what I love about it also royally pisses me off sometimes.

For starters local has to be declared for variables, unlike lua.
Otherwise the variable goes to _
Also note, that some tutorials literally tell you the opposite.

all variables are local by default
unless you don't declare them
then they go to _ (throwaway)
Some tutorials get this wrong too.

all variables have to be declared local
except tables. failure to declare a table WITHOUT a local will cause things like
table.insert to fail with "nil" values for no god damn reason.
No tutorial I could find mentioned this.

Did you know we call methods with '\'?
By the way, we call methods with '\'.
Why? Who the fuck knows.
Does make writing web routes more natural though.

Variables in the parameters of new are declared and bound for you. Would have loved to know this before hand instead of trying
to bind to them like a fucking idiot.

Fat arrows are used to pass in self for methods.
Unless you're calling a method. Then you use backwards slash. This fact is unhelpful when you're a beginner and dealing with the differences between the *other* arrow, the backslash, the fat arrow, and the fact that functions can be called with or WITHOUT parenthesis.
And on that note..

While learning all this other shit, don't forget parenthesis are optional!
Except when they're not!
..Like when you have a function call among your arguments and have to disambiguate which args belong to the outer call and to the inner call! Why not just be fucking consistent?

But on the plus size, ":" is now used for what it should have been used for in the fucking beginning: binding values to keys.
And on the downside, it's in a language thats built on top of another language that uses it for fucking *method calls*, a completely
different fucking usage.

And better still, to add to that brainfuckery thats lost in the mental translational noise like static on a fucking dialup modem, you define methods with the fat arrow. Wait, was that the single arrow or fat one? Yeah the fat one. Fuck. But not before you do THIS shit..

someShit: =>

yeah, you STILL include the god damn colon just so when you're coming from lua you can do a mental double take. "Why am I passing self twice? Oh right, because fuck me, I decided to use moonscript." It's consistent on that front but it also pisses me off.

A lot of these are actually quality of life improvements disguised as gotchas, but when you're two beers in to a 30 minute headscratcher it sure doesn't fucking feel like it.

Nevertheless, once I moved beyond the gotchas, it was like night and day. Sure moonscripts takes a giant steaming dump all over the lua output, like a schizophrenic alcoholic athena from the head of zeus, but god damn, when it works it just WORKS.

Locals that act like locals? Check.
Sane OOP? Check.
Classes, constructors, easy access to class methods, iterators? Check, check, check, check, check.

I fucking hate ceremony. Configuration over convention is for cunts. And moonscript goes a long ways toward making lua less cunty.
If you've ever felt this way while using lua, please, give moonscript a try.

You'll regret it, but in a good way!

Til that Node 10 has `for await ... in`. Basically looping async iterators. This changes everything!

I was trying to make a circular buffer in C++. I was also trying to expose iterators for using the buffer with STL algorithms. I kept trying to think about how to add the functions needed to manipulate the existing internal iterators to not exceed the bounds of the buffer. Then I realized I was "too close" to the problem. There was no way I could properly control the internal iterators of the storage vector I was using. Not without giving too much power to the user of my library. So I abstracted the iterators up one level. Hid all the details of the internal iterator and made a new iterator.

The solution of abstracting the iterator was not the epiphany. The epiphany was if you are struggling with how to solve a particular problem. You keep running into problems with how to represent something, there is too much power available at a particular representation, or the object you are trying to make work just don't fit. This is when you should consider abstracting a level up. Take a higher look at the problem and simplify the interface.

Abstraction could be a number of things. Divide and conquer, hiding details, specializing an object, etc. Whatever tool is needed to make the problem more consumable to your brain.

I'm learning Rust as a case study for my own programming language. It's funny how many approaches exist to the humble loop.

- In classic procedural languages, a loop's job is to repeat actions, and as such it provides a multitude of tools to control this repetition.

- In all languages with iterators, a for-in loop is a construct that does something with every element of a collection. In languages with both iterators and generator functions, this can even be used to define a sequence in terms of another.

- In Rust, a loop is an expression that obtains its value through repeated execution. It can also be used like a classic loop, of course, but this is the interesting part.

- My little language is a functional language, so "loop" is the Y combinator. To loop means to define the value of an expression in terms of itself. It's the only looping construct, gets special treatment from the type checker and it's also used in recursive type definitions.

Could it be, that we use i for incremental loops because it's an abbreviation for iterator (or increment)? 🤔 Why haven't I though of this sooner?!

Iterators, fail-safe vs. fail-fast?

Should I make modification-counters of fail-fast iterators atomic?