sagOct 2, 2024

Not

https://lemm.ee/post/43835677

Not - lemm.ee

Show threadEpheraOct 2, 2024

Alright, spicy opinion time: I think, the ! operator is dumb.

It’s yet another symbol with a meaning, which people have to learn.

And it’s easy to overlook, especially in languages with parentheses in their if-conditions:

if (!list.isEmpty()) { ... }

I think that just a .not() method on Booleans is cooler:

if (list.isEmpty().not()) { ... }

You can do this in Rust, which is where I have that idea from: play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&edi…

Rust Playground

A browser interface to the Rust compiler to experiment with the language

Show threadpetersr
Would you say that it reads better as “not x” or “x not” (if we remove all special characters)?
Oct 2, 2024 at 2:40pmWeb
Show threadEpheraOct 2, 2024

I mean, that is more obvious and more readable.

But what I really don’t like about it, is that it’s less clear to what it applies. For example:

not list.isEmpty() and x > 3

Is that not (a and b) or (not a) and b?
Obviously, you can define precedence rules, like there also is for !, but that’s again just additional things to learn.
I’m definitely not generally opposed to special characters. I do also hate significant whitespace, because I find that less readable than braces.