Elias Mårtenson@jackdaniel @screwlisp @publicvoit I couldn't disagree with that article more.
Java originally didn't have format strings. You have to do things almost exactly like how the article showed it:
String s = "a = " + a + ", b = " + b + "\n";
Eventually, people couldn't stand this anymore, and they got a format statement which borrowed a lot from C:
String s = String.format("a = %s, b = %s\n", a, b);
Turns out that distinguishing the way you want to format things with the data you want to format is good thing.
He then goes into a strawman showing some really complicated FORMAT patterns, and then write a lot of code that I certainly don't understand (because I didn't learn his API). He didn't need to implement a new library, because if he needed it, WITH-OUTPUT-TO-STRING is right there.
Vassil Nikolov | Васил Николов
screwlisp
