A tag for questions related to the design of any aspect of programming languages.
If I have a vararg Java method foo(Object ...arg) and I call foo(null, null), I have both arg[0] …
null language-design java variadic-functionsIt seems that a newtype definition is just a data definition that obeys some restrictions (e.g., only one constructor), …
haskell types language-design type-systemsAccording to the Java Language Specification, constructors cannot be marked synchronized because other threads cannot see the object being created …
java constructor language-design synchronizedThis is a question I've been mildly irritated about for some time and just never got around to search the …
lua language-design assignment-operator compound-assignmentIn C#, the following code doesn't compile: class Foo { public string Foo; } The question is: why? More exactly, I understand …
c# language-designAccording to the Java Language Sepecification, 3rd edition: It is a compile-time error if a generic class is a direct …
java generics exception language-designPossible Duplicate: What are some example use cases for symbol literals in Scala? What's the purpose of Symbol and why …
scala syntax language-design symbols literalsI know the language specification forbids partial specialization of function template. I would like to know the rationale why it …
c++ language-design template-specialization partial-specialization function-templatesI was coding today and noticed something. If I open a new interpreter session (IDLE) and check what's defined with …
python python-3.x python-2.7 language-design python-moduleWhat is the utility of the global keyword? Are there any reasons to prefer one method to another? Security? Performance? …
php language-design