Why You’ll like Fantom -part 1 – The compiler
The benefit of the compiler(and static typing) has always been a topic of hot debate. People love it, with passion. And people hate it, with passion. Have you thought about what is it with the compiler that brings people into a love/hate relationship with it?
Compilers. You can’t live with them.. You can’t live without them
Sounds familiar? That’s because compilers are like your wife. They complain .. let you know when you suck. And that’s a good thing. Wait.. is it?
What’s Jack’s solution?
How do you fix your wife? Here are a few suggestions
- Make her responsible for the things she asks ‘you’ to do..
- “Honey, can you make sure you cut my nails every weekend”
- “Oh i am so careless baby.. Things will be way better if someone more dependable(looking at her) took care of all the bills”
- Agree on signals that indicate the times when she is not allowed to complain
- “When I am wearing a red T-shirt .. it means i am in a really bad mood, so you are not allowed to complain. Other days you can.”
Like that’s going to happen
Well who are we kidding. that’s not going to happen. In your dreams Jack. But James might try his luck with the Fantom Compiler..
Make the compiler do more work.
Here are a few examples
- ” Hey compiler can you try and figure out the type when I don’t type it”
and then do a..
a := 3
instead of
Int a := 3
- “All those +s drive me crazy, so can you handle String interpolation for me”?
and then do a..
s = "My color is $color and My age is $age"
instead of
String s = "My color is " + color + " and My age is " + age
- “And BTW.. i don’t really like putting semi colons .. so put them for me at the end of each line and can you handle that multi line strings for me too..”
And so the list can go on..
Agree on signals that indicate the times when the compiler is not allowed to complain
- “When I use a ‘→’ instead of “.” to call a method, just don’t check if the method actually exists or do any sort of type checking”. check an example
blogOrAnimal := getEitherABlogOrAnAnimalFromDatabase() blogOrAnimal->save
“getEitherABlogOrAnAnimalFromDatabase” returns either a blog or an animal. Both of them have a save method. You just want this time, this one time, to treat them equally and call the freaking save method instead of “ifs-and-casts-and-then-calls”
- ” When I declare a type, I mean I want that type, don’t need to me cast”. so..
Blog b := getObject("blog")
instead of..
Blog b := (Blog) getObject("blog")
(assuming that getObject is “declared” to return “Object” but returns the correct type of object depending on a parameter at runtime)
So .. that’s the thing about the Fantom compiler. It provides the benefits of static type checking but shuts itself up when you ask it to. Go to fantom.org to learn more.. or play with it online