Best way to call Haskell functions from within Java - java

I'm looking an efficient way of executing Haskell functions from within a Java program. I've considered the use of exec() to interact with GHC, but it seems like there should be a better method.

I usually avoid JNI-type approaches to linking across runtimes/languages. They just have too many gotchas and little upside. I find it easier to work across process boundaries. While I've never tried it with Haskell and Java, they both have libraries that support XML RPC, and it sounds like a natural fit for what you're doing. So: set up a Haskell program as a "service" and just call its functions when you need them.

I assume you know how to call C from Java? If so, then you can follow the FFI guide to call Haskell from C, and C from Java, creating a bridge. This is a native call, and may require some fiddling with linkers.
Details on calling Haskell from C are here: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Calling_Haskell_from_C
Alternatively, you might consider an RPC server.

Easiest way I can think of: start up hint in a separate process. As a quick demonstration, something dumb like
import Control.Monad
import Language.Haskell.Interpreter
main = getContents >>= mapM_ (eval >=> print) . lines
can be fed expressions on stdin and will give stringy results on stdout. Of course, it'll take a little more work to make sure this is safe.
(Err, assuming Java has some sort of popen2-ish functionality. Otherwise maybe you can do the same over sockets.)

Related

Equivalent of Ruby #map or #collect in Java?

Lets say I have an array movies = get_movies()
In ruby I often do
movies.map {|movie| movie.poster_image_url } or somesuch.
What can I do that is similar in Java? And by similarly elegant and terse and readable. I know there are a bazillion ways I can do this but if there's a nice way to do this that will make me not want to use Groovy or something let me know. I'm sure Java has some awesome ways to do things like this.
This is my Java code so far using TheMovieDB API Java wrapper from https://github.com/holgerbrandl/themoviedbapi/.
TmdbMovies movies = new TmdbApi(BuildConfig.MOVIEDB_API_KEY).getMovies();
MovieResultsPage results = movies.getPopularMovieList("en", 1);
// The following line is RubyJava and needs to your help!
results.getResults().map {|e| e.getPosterPath() };
// or ... more RubyJava results.getResults().map(&:getPosterPath());
A little more about #map/#collect in Ruby in case you know a lot of Java, but aren't familiar with ruby. http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/Array.html#method-i-collect
Closest thing I've seen to answering this from some quick browsing so far... https://planet.jboss.org/post/java_developers_should_learn_ruby
These look close, too. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/lambdaexpressions.html
So many options: Functional Programming in Java
This is Android as well... Anything good things that are available for Android devs out of the box and make this kind of programming easy? This is a functional programming style, right?
--
After getting replies with really good insights like: 'there is nothing wrong with a for loop' and (basically) 'syntax isn't everything', I am deciding that I will not try to make all my Java look like Ruby! I read this and then imagined an alternate future where 'future me' made a whole bunch of bad style decisions: https://github.com/google/guava/wiki/FunctionalExplained. <-- (A good read. TL;DR 'when you go to preposterous lengths to make your code "a one-liner," the Guava team weeps')
There's the map method on streams which takes a method argument.
collection.stream()
.map(obj -> obj.someMethod())
.collect(Collectors.toList()));
map returns another stream so in order to retrieve the list you have call the collect method.
Too much to explain in a post, but you can visit this link which helped me out a lot:
http://winterbe.com/posts/2014/03/16/java-8-tutorial/
I think (a collections class).foreach() is what you want, requires java8, and often makes use of lambda expressions to implement the class that fulfills the required input for the 'foreach()' method.
http://www.mkyong.com/java8/java-8-foreach-examples/
To address your change to that this is Android, then NO, you WILL NOT get java8 class changes such as .foreach(), you CAN get lambda expressions by making use of the retrolambda android variant. But this only gives you some Java8 'syntax' not 'classes', you won't get access to the Streams classes either.

Java equivalent of apply functions in R

I've been programming in R for around a year now, and am just starting to teach myself Java. One thing I've loved about R is the family of apply() functions (e.g. sapply, mapply, apply etc.).
I was wondering if Java had equivalent functions, or if anyone had written these up in Java - I may be able to give some of these a basic go myself, but I wouldn't be able to do much in terms of the optimisation they seem to have (i.e. sapply(FUN, X) seems much faster than for(i in 1:length(X)) FUN(X[i]) in many cases).
If not, am I thinking about this badly e.g. perhaps you don't tend to need to apply some function, FUN to each element of a vector often since Java is object-oriented, so in typical problems where you'd want to use these, Java's not your best bet, or there are other ways of approaching it?
The functional additions in Java 8 should address your concerns.
Previous to java 8 java is not a functional language.
A functional language is a language where it is possible to pass a function as an argument to another function.
The introduction of Lamba expressions solve this problem.
If you can't use java 8 the only possibility is to create an interface with only one method (apply for example) and manually call the apply method when needed (see for example how swing works to handle events like click).

from java to javascript: the object model

I'm trying to port an application I wrote in java to javascript (actually using coffeescript).
Now, I'm feeling lost.. what do you suggest to do to create class properties? Should I use getter/setters? I don't like to do this:
myObj.prop = "hello"
because I could use non existing properties, and it would be easy to mispell something..
How can I get javascript to be a bit more like java, with private, public final properties etc..? Any suggestion?
If you just translate your Java code into JavaScript, you're going to be constantly fighting JavaScript's object model, which is prototype-based, not class-based. There are no private properties on objects, no final properties unless you're using an ES5-compatible engine (you haven't mentioned what your target runtime environment is; browsers aren't use ES5-compatible, it'll be another couple of years), no classes at all in fact.
Instead, I recommend you thoroughly brief yourself on how object orientation actually works in JavaScript, and then build your application fully embracing how JavaScript does it. This is non-trivial, but rewarding.
Some articles that may be of use. I start with closures because really understanding closures is absolutely essential to writing JavaScript, and most "private member" solutions rely on closures. Then I refer to a couple of articles by Douglas Crockford. Crockford is required reading if you're going to work in JavaScript, even if you end up disagreeing with some of his conclusions. Then I point to a couple of articles specifically addressing doing class-like things.
Closures are not complicated - Me
Prototypical inheritance in JavaScript - Crockford
Private Members in JavaScript - Crockford
Simple, Efficient Supercalls in JavaScript - Me Includes syntactic sugar to make it easier to set up hierarchies of objects (it uses class-based terminology, but actually it's just prototypical inheritance), including calling "superclass" methods.
Private Members in JavaScript - Me Listing Crockford's solution and others
Mythical Methods - Me
You must remember this - Me
Addressing some of your specific questions:
what do you suggest to do to create class properties? Should I use getter/setters? I don't like to do this:
myObj.prop = "hello"
because I could use non existing properties, and it would be easy to mispell something..
I don't, I prefer using TDD to ensure that if I do have a typo, it gets revealed in testing. (A good code-completing editor will also be helpful here, though really good JavaScript code-completing editors are thin on the ground.) But you're right that getters and setters in the Java sense (methods like getFoo and setFoo) would make it more obvious when you're creating/accessing a property that you haven't defined in advance (e.g., through a typo) by causing a runtime error, calling a function that doesn't exist. (I say "in the Java sense" because JavaScript as of ES5 has a different kind of "getters" and "setters" that are transparent and wouldn't help with that.) So that's an argument for using them. If you do, you might look at using Google's Closure compiler for release builds, as it will inline them.
How can I get javascript to be a bit more like java, with private...
I've linked Crockford's article on private members, and my own which lists other ways. The very basic explanation of the Crockford model is: You use a variable in the context created by the call to your constructor function and a function created within that context (a closure) that has access to it, rather than an object property:
function Foo() {
var bar;
function Foo_setBar(b) {
bar = b;
}
function Foo_getBar() {
return bar;
}
this.setBar = Foo_setBar;
this.getBar = Foo_getBar;
}
bar is not an object property, but the functions defined in the context with it have an enduring reference to it. This is totally fine if you're going to have a smallish number of Foo objects. If you're going to have thousands of Foo objects you might want to reconsider, because each and every Foo object has its own two functions (really genuinely different Function instances) for Foo_getBar and Foo_setBar.
You'll frequently see the above written like this:
function Foo() {
var bar;
this.setBar = function(b) {
bar = b;
};
this.getBar = function() {
return bar;
};
}
Yes, it's briefer, but now the functions don't have names, and giving your functions names helps your tools help you.
How can I get javascript to be a bit more like java, with...public final properties
You can define a Java-style getter with no setter. Or if your target environment will be ES5-compliant (again, browsers aren't yet, it'll be another couple of years), you could use the new Object.defineProperty feature that allows you to set properties that cannot be written to.
But my main point is to embrace the language and environment in which you're working. Learn it well, and you'll find that different patterns apply than in Java. Both are great languages (I use them both a lot), but they work differently and lead to different solutions.
You can use module pattern to make private properties and public accessors as one more option.
This doesn't directly answer your question, but I would abandon the idea of trying to make the JavaScript app like Java. They really are different languages (despite some similarities in syntax and in their name). As a general statement, it makes sense to adopt the idioms of the target language when porting something.
Currently there are many choices for you , you can check dojo library. In dojo, you can code mostly like java programming
Class
Javascript doesn’t have a Class system like Java,dojo provide dojo.declare to define a functionality to simulate this. Check this page . There are field variable, constructor method, extend from other class.
JavaScript has a feature that constructor functions may return any object (not necesserily this). So, your constructor function could just return a proxy object, that allows access only to the public methods of your class. Using this method you can create real protected member, just like in Java (with inheritance, super() call, etc.)
I created a little library to streamline this method: http://idya.github.com/oolib/
Dojo is one option. I personally prefer Prototype. It also has a framework and API for creating classes and using inheritance in a more "java-ish" way. See the Class.create method in the API. I've used it on multiple webapps I've worked on.
I mainly agree with #Willie Wheeler that you shouldn't try too hard to make your app like Java - there are ways of using JavaScript to create things like private members etc - Douglas Crockford and others have written about this kind of thing.
I'm the author of the CoffeeScript book from PragProg. Right now, I use CoffeeScript as my primary language; I got fluent in JavaScript in the course of learning CoffeeScript. But before that, my best language was Java.
So I know what you're going through. Java has a very strong set of best practices that give you a clear idea of what good code is: clean encapsulation, fine-grained exceptions, thorough JavaDocs, and GOF design patterns all over the place. When you switch to JavaScript, that goes right out the window. There are few "best practices," and more of a vague sense of "this is elegant." Then when you start seeing bugs, it's incredibly frustrating—there are no compile-time errors, and far fewer, less precise runtime errors. It's like playing without a net. And while CoffeeScript adds some syntactic sugar that might look familiar to Java coders (notably classes), it's really no less of a leap.
Here's my advice: Learn to write good CoffeeScript/JavaScript code. Trying to make it look like Java is the path to madness (and believe me, many have tried; see: just about any JS code released by Google). Good JS code is more minimalistic. Don't use get/set methods; use exceptions sparingly; and don't use classes or design patterns for everything. JS is ultimately a more expressive language than Java is, and CoffeeScript even moreso. Once you get used to the feeling of danger that comes with it, you'll like it.
One note: JavaScripters are, by and large, terrible when it comes to testing. There are plenty of good JS testing frameworks out there, but robust testing is much rarer than in the Java world. So in that regard, there's something JavaScripters can learn from Java coders. Using TDD would also be a great way of easing your concerns about how easy it is to make errors that, otherwise, wouldn't get caught until some particular part of your application runs.

As a Java programmer learning Python, what should I look out for? [closed]

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Much of my programming background is in Java, and I'm still doing most of my programming in Java. However, I'm starting to learn Python for some side projects at work, and I'd like to learn it as independent of my Java background as possible - i.e. I don't want to just program Java in Python. What are some things I should look out for?
A quick example - when looking through the Python tutorial, I came across the fact that defaulted mutable parameters of a function (such as a list) are persisted (remembered from call to call). This was counter-intuitive to me as a Java programmer and hard to get my head around. (See here and here if you don't understand the example.)
Someone also provided me with this list, which I found helpful, but short. Anyone have any other examples of how a Java programmer might tend to misuse Python...? Or things a Java programmer would falsely assume or have trouble understanding?
Edit: Ok, a brief overview of the reasons addressed by the article I linked to to prevent duplicates in the answers (as suggested by Bill the Lizard). (Please let me know if I make a mistake in phrasing, I've only just started with Python so I may not understand all the concepts fully. And a disclaimer - these are going to be very brief, so if you don't understand what it's getting at check out the link.)
A static method in Java does not translate to a Python classmethod
A switch statement in Java translates to a hash table in Python
Don't use XML
Getters and setters are evil (hey, I'm just quoting :) )
Code duplication is often a necessary evil in Java (e.g. method overloading), but not in Python
(And if you find this question at all interesting, check out the link anyway. :) It's quite good.)
Don't put everything into classes. Python's built-in list and dictionaries will take you far.
Don't worry about keeping one class per module. Divide modules by purpose, not by class.
Use inheritance for behavior, not interfaces. Don't create an "Animal" class for "Dog" and "Cat" to inherit from, just so you can have a generic "make_sound" method.
Just do this:
class Dog(object):
def make_sound(self):
return "woof!"
class Cat(object):
def make_sound(self):
return "meow!"
class LolCat(object):
def make_sound(self):
return "i can has cheezburger?"
The referenced article has some good advice that can easily be misquoted and misunderstood. And some bad advice.
Leave Java behind. Start fresh. "do not trust your [Java-based] instincts". Saying things are "counter-intuitive" is a bad habit in any programming discipline. When learning a new language, start fresh, and drop your habits. Your intuition must be wrong.
Languages are different. Otherwise, they'd be the same language with different syntax, and there'd be simple translators. Because there are not simple translators, there's no simple mapping. That means that intuition is unhelpful and dangerous.
"A static method in Java does not translate to a Python classmethod." This kind of thing is really limited and unhelpful. Python has a staticmethod decorator. It also has a classmethod decorator, for which Java has no equivalent.
This point, BTW, also included the much more helpful advice on not needlessly wrapping everything in a class. "The idiomatic translation of a Java static method is usually a module-level function".
The Java switch statement in Java can be implemented several ways. First, and foremost, it's usually an if elif elif elif construct. The article is unhelpful in this respect. If you're absolutely sure this is too slow (and can prove it) you can use a Python dictionary as a slightly faster mapping from value to block of code. Blindly translating switch to dictionary (without thinking) is really bad advice.
Don't use XML. Doesn't make sense when taken out of context. In context it means don't rely on XML to add flexibility. Java relies on describing stuff in XML; WSDL files, for example, repeat information that's obvious from inspecting the code. Python relies on introspection instead of restating everything in XML.
But Python has excellent XML processing libraries. Several.
Getters and setters are not required in Python they way they're required in Java. First, you have better introspection in Python, so you don't need getters and setters to help make dynamic bean objects. (For that, you use collections.namedtuple).
However, you have the property decorator which will bundle getters (and setters) into an attribute-like construct. The point is that Python prefers naked attributes; when necessary, we can bundle getters and setters to appear as if there's a simple attribute.
Also, Python has descriptor classes if properties aren't sophisticated enough.
Code duplication is often a necessary evil in Java (e.g. method overloading), but not in Python. Correct. Python uses optional arguments instead of method overloading.
The bullet point went on to talk about closure; that isn't as helpful as the simple advice to use default argument values wisely.
One thing you might be used to in Java that you won't find in Python is strict privacy. This is not so much something to look out for as it is something not to look for (I am embarrassed by how long I searched for a Python equivalent to 'private' when I started out!). Instead, Python has much more transparency and easier introspection than Java. This falls under what is sometimes described as the "we're all consenting adults here" philosophy. There are a few conventions and language mechanisms to help prevent accidental use of "unpublic" methods and so forth, but the whole mindset of information hiding is virtually absent in Python.
The biggest one I can think of is not understanding or not fully utilizing duck typing. In Java you're required to specify very explicit and detailed type information upfront. In Python typing is both dynamic and largely implicit. The philosophy is that you should be thinking about your program at a higher level than nominal types. For example, in Python, you don't use inheritance to model substitutability. Substitutability comes by default as a result of duck typing. Inheritance is only a programmer convenience for reusing implementation.
Similarly, the Pythonic idiom is "beg forgiveness, don't ask permission". Explicit typing is considered evil. Don't check whether a parameter is a certain type upfront. Just try to do whatever you need to do with the parameter. If it doesn't conform to the proper interface, it will throw a very clear exception and you will be able to find the problem very quickly. If someone passes a parameter of a type that was nominally unexpected but has the same interface as what you expected, then you've gained flexibility for free.
The most important thing, from a Java POV, is that it's perfectly ok to not make classes for everything. There are many situations where a procedural approach is simpler and shorter.
The next most important thing is that you will have to get over the notion that the type of an object controls what it may do; rather, the code controls what objects must be able to support at runtime (this is by virtue of duck-typing).
Oh, and use native lists and dicts (not customized descendants) as far as possible.
The way exceptions are treated in Python is different from
how they are treated in Java. While in Java the advice
is to use exceptions only for exceptional conditions this is not
so with Python.
In Python things like Iterator makes use of exception mechanism to signal that there are no more items.But such a design is not considered as good practice in Java.
As Alex Martelli puts in his book Python in a Nutshell
the exception mechanism with other languages (and applicable to Java)
is LBYL (Look Before You Leap) :
is to check in advance, before attempting an operation, for all circumstances that might make the operation invalid.
Where as with Python the approach is EAFP (it's easier to Ask for forgiveness than permission)
A corrollary to "Don't use classes for everything": callbacks.
The Java way for doing callbacks relies on passing objects that implement the callback interface (for example ActionListener with its actionPerformed() method). Nothing of this sort is necessary in Python, you can directly pass methods or even locally defined functions:
def handler():
print("click!")
button.onclick(handler)
Or even lambdas:
button.onclick(lambda: print("click!\n"))

Java -> Python?

Besides the dynamic nature of Python (and the syntax), what are some of the major features of the Python language that Java doesn't have, and vice versa?
List comprehensions. I often find myself filtering/mapping lists, and being able to say [line.replace("spam","eggs") for line in open("somefile.txt") if line.startswith("nee")] is really nice.
Functions are first class objects. They can be passed as parameters to other functions, defined inside other function, and have lexical scope. This makes it really easy to say things like people.sort(key=lambda p: p.age) and thus sort a bunch of people on their age without having to define a custom comparator class or something equally verbose.
Everything is an object. Java has basic types which aren't objects, which is why many classes in the standard library define 9 different versions of functions (for boolean, byte, char, double, float, int, long, Object, short). Array.sort is a good example. Autoboxing helps, although it makes things awkward when something turns out to be null.
Properties. Python lets you create classes with read-only fields, lazily-generated fields, as well as fields which are checked upon assignment to make sure they're never 0 or null or whatever you want to guard against, etc.'
Default and keyword arguments. In Java if you want a constructor that can take up to 5 optional arguments, you must define 6 different versions of that constructor. And there's no way at all to say Student(name="Eli", age=25)
Functions can only return 1 thing. In Python you have tuple assignment, so you can say spam, eggs = nee() but in Java you'd need to either resort to mutable out parameters or have a custom class with 2 fields and then have two additional lines of code to extract those fields.
Built-in syntax for lists and dictionaries.
Operator Overloading.
Generally better designed libraries. For example, to parse an XML document in Java, you say
Document doc = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse("test.xml");
and in Python you say
doc = parse("test.xml")
Anyway, I could go on and on with further examples, but Python is just overall a much more flexible and expressive language. It's also dynamically typed, which I really like, but which comes with some disadvantages.
Java has much better performance than Python and has way better tool support. Sometimes those things matter a lot and Java is the better language than Python for a task; I continue to use Java for some new projects despite liking Python a lot more. But as a language I think Python is superior for most things I find myself needing to accomplish.
I think this pair of articles by Philip J. Eby does a great job discussing the differences between the two languages (mostly about philosophy/mentality rather than specific language features).
Python is Not Java
Java is Not Python, either
One key difference in Python is significant whitespace. This puts a lot of people off - me too for a long time - but once you get going it seems natural and makes much more sense than ;s everywhere.
From a personal perspective, Python has the following benefits over Java:
No Checked Exceptions
Optional Arguments
Much less boilerplate and less verbose generally
Other than those, this page on the Python Wiki is a good place to look with lots of links to interesting articles.
With Jython you can have both. It's only at Python 2.2, but still very useful if you need an embedded interpreter that has access to the Java runtime.
Apart from what Eli Courtwright said:
I find iterators in Python more concise. You can use for i in something, and it works with pretty much everything. Yeah, Java has gotten better since 1.5, but for example you can iterate through a string in python with this same construct.
Introspection: In python you can get at runtime information about an object or a module about its symbols, methods, or even its docstrings. You can also instantiate them dynamically. Java has some of this, but usually in Java it takes half a page of code to get an instance of a class, whereas in Python it is about 3 lines. And as far as I know the docstrings thing is not available in Java

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