2024-02-01 14:16:14 +00:00
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:PROPERTIES:
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:ID: a397da72-7731-4a69-9460-38f4a76fbfc1
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:END:
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#+Title: Rigid vs Flexible
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#+Author: Yann Esposito
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#+Date: [2023-12-24]
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2024-08-14 09:35:42 +00:00
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- tags :: [[id:a5be1daf-1010-428f-a30f-8faf95c1a42f][blog]]
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2024-02-01 14:16:14 +00:00
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- source ::
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* Introduction
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A common debate in software programming is about choosing a Static vs Dynamic
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programming language.
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After many years of debate, I think I would prefer to move the discussion toward
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Rigid vs Flexible programming.
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Before starting the discussion here are a few important points to remember:
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First of all, remember that the word "Dynamic" in dynamic programming language,
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was tailored to make it impossible to attack.
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It is impossible to find a negative meaning to the word dynamic [^1].
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From its inventor Richard E.
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Bellman:
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> It also has a very interesting property as an adjective, and that is it’s
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> impossible to use the word, dynamic, in a pejorative sense.
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> Try thinking of some combination that will possibly give it a pejorative meaning.
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> It’s impossible.
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> Thus, I thought dynamic programming was a good name.
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> It was something not even a Congressman could object to.
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> So I used it as an umbrella for my activities.
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Second point, I would like to say that while clearly in Rigid vs Flexible you
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feel the wording is more positive around the term Flexible.
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I am personally convinced that like in nature and the body of animals, the
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flexibility vs rigidity could be optimized differently depending on your task
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and environment.
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I have two dogs.
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One of the is a beagle, for a dog, he is not very flexible.
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But this give this dog a great advantage, acceleration.
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He can go from 0 to maximal speed almost instantly, he could switch direction
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almost in a single jump.
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He is like a spring.
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My other dog, is a log bigger, she is a mix of an Anatoly Sheperd and Pyrenean
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Mountain Dog.
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And she is extremely flexible.
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So flexible in fact, that when we had to put a Dog surgery collard, we had to
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change it to a lot longer one because she could curve entirely herself so well.
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She is a *lot* faster than my Beagle.
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Despite her bigger size and her speed, my dogs play together it is not always
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her that wins.
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Simply because the beagle developed a strategy to take advantage of his
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properties.
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Mainly, the main disadvantage of flexibility, is the lack of acceleration.
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So the Beagle wait for the bigger dog to be very close to him and he switch its
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direction at the last second.
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The Sheperd need to take a longer time to change direction.
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This way he can take back another direction.
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In the end as she is a lot bigger dog which was tailored to be a defender she
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always is the winner.
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In software engineering, I think we can that analogy is still relevant.
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You have programming languages, frameworks, libraries that can be more or less
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flexible or rigid. Sometime rigidity has advantages. It makes you start faster,
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prevent you from making mistakes.
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While more flexible libraries put too much burden on the programmer that need to
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learn himself by making mistakes how he should behave.
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So let's jump on a few more concrete examples.
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[^1]: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/opre.50.1.48.17791
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* Examples
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** Partial functions
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One biggest hurdle in programming are partial functions.
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Mainly a function whose given the wrong argument will throw an exception.
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There are so many strategies to handle these, but here are a few:
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1. throw an exception at runtime like ~div(2,0)~
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2. returns ~null~
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3. check the type and fail the compilation, it works for types, but not for
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values though. So if you also want to prevent some value to be passed you
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need to created a few pretty advanced mechanism to ensure your type does not
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contain any forbidden value typically to protect a division by 0 for example.
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