[REBOL] Re: On mutability and sameness
From: chris:starforge at: 19-Jun-2001 17:41
#19-Jun-01# Message from *Jeff Kreis*:
Hi Jeff,
> functionality that's desired. Joel's got this one on the head.
> You gain little understanding of something like series by
> trying to build series in C. You'll miss the forest for the
> trees, so to speak.
Just to play devil's advocate for a moment...
On several occasions I have found myself in a situation where I needed to
know how Rebol does something. How series were represented is one of the
things I asked about some time ago, I expect there will be others (I have
one about strings, memory allocation and copying in the queue ATM). Not out
of interest as such, but in order to use the most correct algorithm to match
the representation. I freely admit that for general use, these levels of
details certainly aren't important - but when you're pushing the envelope,
you NEED to know, at least in general terms, what you're working with.
What I think REBOL is lacking is a rigid language spec, or at least a
document that tells REBOL hackers about the time and space complexity of
major datatypes and operations. Without this sort of information, it is
very easy to end up using something with linear or exponential cost, when
a constant cost alternative is actually avilable. There is no need to
--
New sig in the works
Explorer 2260, Designer and Coder
http://www.starforge.co.uk
--
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard
-- Prof. Steiner
