Scala, conciseness, and higher-order functions
It was nice to see Dan Weinreb's "First Impressions" article about Scala. It's rare to see a programming language evaluation that's so well-informed and free of emotional reactions.
Steve Yegge won't ever be accused of being that impartial, and his impassioned article about code size is entertaining, but could hardly be described as "unemotional". What I found appalling is that in 122 comments to an article about code size, not a single one mentioned the idea of higher order functions. I think that these, and pattern matching, are among the most effective language features for making code more concise while preserving readability.
11:20:38 PM
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