3 ms·

> Sorry, I didn't recognize your handle. No problem. Just, you know, hi! I'm actually happy to pick this thread up. I remember really enjoying the last disc

by state 10y ago

> Sorry, I didn't recognize your handle. No problem. Just, you know, hi! I'm actually happy to pick this thread up. I remember really enjoying the last discussion. As (I think) we discussed last time I basically have two views: - Urbit actually works. Like, I actually build stuff on top of it. That's really the layer I'm most interested in. If it were built in Lisp, well, I probably wouldn't know the difference. I'm not sure I'm able to understand the implicit criticism at the user level. - Shaking off the cruft of existing systems is actually pretty hard. I don't have as much experience with this as a programmer as Curtis does, but it's a problem near and dear to me. It's very difficult to think clearly inside of someone else's intellectual framework. So, maybe Hoon looks like a bad Lisp variant today. What does it look like in 50 years? Maybe it's dead, maybe it's everywhere. I'm not sure we can actually make this judgement for certain. That is: whether Nock / Hoon is definitively better or worse in terms of its long-term adoption and performance. What Nock does seem to unlock is incredible amount of enthusiasm. The feeling of disillusionment can easily be converted into excitement. I've seen this done by Urbit — and that's pretty difficult to do. My intuition is that Lisp suffers from the opposite: the feeling that breaking from its history is impossible. Either way I'm serious about getting you two to have this out in some kind of organized way. Ideally, on Urbit somehow.

lisper 10y ago
> I remember really enjoying the last discussion. Very happy to hear that. > I'm not sure I'm able to understand the implicit criticism at the user level. Let me make the criticism explicit then: inventing a new language is not hard. People do it all the time. It's an elementary exercise. However, inventing a good new language, i.e. one that actually advances the state of the art and provides a substantial advantage over existing languages -- that is very hard. That happens very rarely, probably less than a dozen times in the history of computing. Although I have never heard Curtis say so explicitly, the rhetoric surrounding Urbit strongly implies that Nock and Hoon are languages of the second sort, that is, that they provide some benefit that existing languages lack, and without which developing Urbit would be substantially more difficult or even impossible. My question for the last four years has been: what is that benefit? Do Nock and Hoon really advance the state of the art in programming language design, or is their sole purpose to be the Shiny New Thing that gets people excited? Because if it's the latter, that does not bode well for Urbit's long-term prospects. Nothing gets to be the Shiny New Thing forever. > It's very difficult to think clearly inside of someone else's intellectual framework. That may be true, but do you not see the irony here? You didn't invent Nock/Hoon, Curtis did. So if you are thinking clearly, then you are doing it in someone else's intellectual framework, precisely the thing you say is very difficult. > What Nock does seem to unlock is incredible amount of enthusiasm. That I don't doubt. Curtis is a master marketeer. But Donald Trump is unlocking an incredible amount of enthusiasm too. Just because a lot of people get enthusiastic about something doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
- dustingetz 10y ago
  Forgive my ignorance, but a typed functional system all the way down to machine is a huge departure from today's languages built on top of imperative dynamic machines, and a huge advantage in building typed functional systems, isn't it? I would go so far as to say that without a new machine and new languages designed for it, the abstraction will always leak. Which is why our software sucks today.
  - lisper 10y ago
    That's true, but Urbit isn't like that. It runs on stock hardware, which is to say, untyped imperative hardware. And even from a purely theoretical point of view, Urbit's lowest level (Nock) is untyped. The last time anyone built a computer that was typed all the way down to the hardware was (ironically) Lisp machines.

by state 10y ago

lisper 10y ago

> I remember really enjoying the last discussion. Very happy to hear that. > I'm not sure I'm able to understand the implicit criticism at the user level. Let me make the criticism explicit then: inventing a new language is not hard. People do it all the time. It's an elementary exercise. However, inventing a good new language, i.e. one that actually advances the state of the art and provides a substantial advantage over existing languages -- that is very hard. That happens very rarely, probably less than a dozen times in the history of computing. Although I have never heard Curtis say so explicitly, the rhetoric surrounding Urbit strongly implies that Nock and Hoon are languages of the second sort, that is, that they provide some benefit that existing languages lack, and without which developing Urbit would be substantially more difficult or even impossible. My question for the last four years has been: what is that benefit? Do Nock and Hoon really advance the state of the art in programming language design, or is their sole purpose to be the Shiny New Thing that gets people excited? Because if it's the latter, that does not bode well for Urbit's long-term prospects. Nothing gets to be the Shiny New Thing forever. > It's very difficult to think clearly inside of someone else's intellectual framework. That may be true, but do you not see the irony here? You didn't invent Nock/Hoon, Curtis did. So if you are thinking clearly, then you are doing it in someone else's intellectual framework, precisely the thing you say is very difficult. > What Nock does seem to unlock is incredible amount of enthusiasm. That I don't doubt. Curtis is a master marketeer. But Donald Trump is unlocking an incredible amount of enthusiasm too. Just because a lot of people get enthusiastic about something doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.

dustingetz 10y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but a typed functional system all the way down to machine is a huge departure from today's languages built on top of imperative dynamic machines, and a huge advantage in building typed functional systems, isn't it? I would go so far as to say that without a new machine and new languages designed for it, the abstraction will always leak. Which is why our software sucks today.
- lisper 10y ago
  That's true, but Urbit isn't like that. It runs on stock hardware, which is to say, untyped imperative hardware. And even from a purely theoretical point of view, Urbit's lowest level (Nock) is untyped. The last time anyone built a computer that was typed all the way down to the hardware was (ironically) Lisp machines.