The dangers of an highly flexible language

[jducoeur]

Scala (my new language of choice) is a delight in many ways, and I'll be talking about one of the serious ones shortly.

However, it has its dangers, particularly in the sheer degree of metaprogramming it allows. This is surely nowhere better illustrated than in the recent scala-lolz library. This entirely functional but horrifying piece of code adds such things as:

• The ability to throw exceptions with OH NOES !! and test them with OMG


• Equality testing with IZ


• Assertions !!!!!!!! (non-null), ?!!? (true) and Can has (general)

As a technology demonstration, it's actually kind of impressive. But the opportunities for obfuscating code in new and terrible ways are positively Lovecraftian...

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of Intercal. "Pleaz maek mi file kthxbi!"

[jducoeur]

Yaas. The particularly scary part here, though, is that you could, with one innocuous-looking inclusion at the top of the file, just mix this stuff a bit into an otherwise sensible-looking program, and confuse the living bejeezus out of somebody...

[siderea]

• Equality testing with IZ

I was about to say, "Well at least that disambiguates it from assignment".

And then I thought, "Not if you do it right...."

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

IZ IN UR VARIABLZ
CONFLATIN' MEMES

Lovecraft

[metageek.livejournal.com]

the opportunities for obfuscating code in new and terrible ways are positively Lovecraftian...

Well, it's not completely new; Lisp has it, and so does Perl. But that's a lovely description; I'm going to have to share it with people at work.