So there will be an entirely new way to profit on coding.

And it will be very social.

well that is the plan anyways. I can dream can't I?

There is no pure eager language on earth yet. Copute ETA 2012.

Sounds interesting... I have a feeling it'll be quite an exercise to communicate your ideas.

I think it will simplify coding greatly and it will be very natural.

Especially for people new to coding.

But lets see what happens.

The code is much more elegant than Scala imho. and it will compile to Scala.

Later other targets.

Any way back on topic, okay well I think anonymous comment might help, but I guess you need to think of it in terms of significance, and also potential downsides.

on downvote of course

It is easily one of the most-discussed aspects of SO. Folks tend to get passionate about it - for and against.

A lot to think about. I don't have it boiled down in my head. So I guess I will stop here for now. Any more comments?

You mean the wiki aspect?

@ShelbyMooreIII The down-voting! Though editing is perhaps a close 2nd

hi there

For folks used to immutable, hierarchical forum posts, it's quite a change.

yup

@ShelbyMooreIII Nothing for the moment - I have to get back to housework, quickly running out of weekend. But feel free to raise a new meta discussion if you've something else, or drop in here again - there's almost always someone here willing to chat.

okay sounds good. I guess you can keep it in your backpocket and use it if things are getting worse.

thanks and glad we could end on a positive note. Bye for now.

to everyone

@Shog9 do you know if this chat system is open source?

just perchance, I know you're probably not the best person to ask

@Purmou It's not, although a few people have attempted making open source clones.

@TimStone Heh, I bet they have. It's really nice

that's pretty cool

also, the page title is stuck at (1) Tavern on the Meta

Btw, look at the new downvotes and my responses. stackoverflow.com/questions/3166840/…

You see they still are having misunderstandings. I guess this is causing a lot of cognitive dissonance.

Any suggestions?

I now think the problem in the casting answer is not the anonymous vote comment. It is the fact that what I am saying is so boggling their minds, that they just can't quite get it. It is like unlearning a bad habit. It takes a while. What do you think?

@ShelbyMooreIII My suggestion would be to write a question. I suspect - and now granted, I'm hardly an expert on this - that the dissonance here is between your understanding of what a cast means in the general sense and what Marc and Jon know it means in terms of the C# compiler, the underlying IL, and the .NET VM (remember, .NET preserves and enforces type-safety all the way down through the final generated machine code). A resolution to this discrepancy would, IMHO, make an excellent question.

As a format for this, I would suggest stating your assumptions on what a cast should mean and how it should behave, and then asking how this fits - or doesn't - with how they're actually implemented in the C# stack.

(BTW: I doubt there are very many people alive with as much intimate knowledge of C# and .NET as Marc and Jon.)

OT: this is one of the areas where I often find myself frustrated moving between C++ and C# (which I do all too often), as the rules are (for all the similarities in the syntax) quite different. A cast in C++ is quite a bit closer to your description (runtime conversion still happens in response to a cast, but any type-checking will generally be something you've explicitly asked for prior to that point).

See the last comments. I think we've nailed the misunderstanding. I am waiting on their responses.

Unfortunately it looks hopeless with Marc. I am going to ask him to come in chat so we can hash it out.

what's Happy Hour?

Shog9 I would like to reply to your suggestions but I would like to do so with Marc here.

The only way to resolve this issue is with him in chat.

Marc did not come to chat? Or am I in the wrong room?

Well, there are many chat rooms, including one specifically for C#, on Stack Overflow. Marc's actually already in this room, but I can't really speak to his desire (or lack thereof) to continue the discussion in chat.

okay thanks.

I better let it rest. I don't think he wants to discuss it with me. That is okay. I wanted to understand what he meant by overgeneralizing, etc.. I think I was being more precise by explaining that the cast is only the syntax. I think conflating cast and runtime is overgeneralizing. But any ways... That is why I prefer a language where casts are never conversions. :) Much less to explain and think about.

I think you've actually managed to explain what Marc is talking about in your answer. You've said:

> A cast is erased at compile-time

and you've quoted Eric as saying:

> A cast operator is text which describes an action - a conversion - which the runtime can then perform.

The point I think Marc is making is that if the cast has some runtime implication then it does not "disappear" at run time - the runtime may have to do things which may or may not be a conversion.

So whilst there is no "cast" text in run time, what you get is one of the recipes for what you need to do - a type check, or a conversion, or whatever it may be.

this is unlike C, where uint32_t a = 0xABCD; uint64_t b = (uint32_t)a; compiles to

Even here, you could argue the cast has not been eliminated truly, since it is basically a bit pattern-type typecast

Now, you could say the word "cast" as an operator has disappeared, but again as Marc says, so does much of the rest of the language. Take C for example - for keywords do not convert to assembly but they still have a run time consequence, usually with compare/jump-if-condition instructions or as a repeated block (loop unrolled) (unless the compiler can optimise them out for some reason).

I think what he's trying to say is erased is the wrong word. What you're trying to say is "conversion is something that happens at run time; cast is a programming language feature which may translate to a number of different run time behaviours". Although, I lay no claim to expertise and reserve the right to be entirely wrong!

^ I saw this on G+ and thought it was @mootinator until I looked closer.

@Fosco Lol, thought so too at first glance.

I have a new idea. I am thinking that perhas the problem with authors getting offended is when they feel they have invested a lot in their answer or they feel their answer is more important. I would think these authors are willing to stay online and monitor their answer live. They are dedicated. How could we make it work better for them?

P.S. I edited my casting answer again, so maybe reading that again will provide some context for what I will suggest next. stackoverflow.com/a/8464968/615784

I understand the point that we need to efficiently downvote those crap answers where the author didn't even care enough to make sense. I have run across about 3 or 4 of those, and I downvote them w/o even explaining because I can't even understand what they wrote at all.

But on answers where I can see the author did at least try to make a coherent point, I provide a feedback on why I am downvoting them. And so they can fix their answer and then reply to my comment, I might be able to remove my downvote.

So my idea is could we add a box in the answer to show that the author is live and willing to get feedback live?

Something very easy for the reader to click and give a quick feedback?

Then on the downvote, have it say, "The author cares enough to be online to receive your feedback. You could help him by letting him know first, before downvoting. Proceed with downvote or go to chat? [downvote that sucker] [okay I will try to help him]"

So then authors who don't stay online won't get this extra help. But those that care enough will. So then the next time someone complains about downvoting, you can point to the FAQ that says they can improve their chances of feedback by staying online in special chat room. So then this will increase the participation time in SO overhaul and also make the chat rooms more utilized.

You know people are really lazy to try new things that they think might be complicated or take too much time. So a one button thing is what you need and to sort of make them feel bad in downvoting if they don't help out. And for those authors who don't care enough to stick around in chat, then they really have nothing to complain about anymore.

Any feedback?