5 ms·

> Languages such as C, Java, Python, and Rust are usually designed by experienced programmers in industry, for experienced programmers in industry. Pyret, on t

by dom0 10y ago

> Languages such as C, Java, Python, and Rust are usually designed by experienced programmers in industry, for experienced programmers in industry. Pyret, on the other hand, is designed by computer science educators, for computer science education. Honestly, looking at the examples on the Pyret main page makes me think that this isn't a good approach at all. I have been in software engineering for many years now and worked with quite some languages, yet I find the code practically in-understandable and the language looks very complex. So likely someone who "learned" using this language will have a lot of trouble actually working with real languages, assuming that he actually managed to learn this language as his first, which is rather unlikely I believe. I was also involved in CS education - in first semester programming courses. And the language is really the last problem there (C was used, I think the dept. is moving to Python for that course though). Especially eg. Python is a good language overall and is already widely used in CS education. In short, I don't see why the world needs this, and I actually think that using it would be actively harmful.

jswrenn 10y ago
What characteristics makes a programming language a "real" programming language?
- petre 10y ago
  - has a standard library - has library support for the usual stuff: strings, math, web, database, encoding, etc. - written using a lower level language (like C, Rust, C++), self hosted (Go) or a mix of those (Dlang, Perl6) - is actually used to build applications, has some sort of community around it (Rust, Perl, Python, Lua etc.) or some backing (Swift, Java, Go)
- threatofrain 10y ago
  The most important distinction would be that you don't have to make a transition from education contexts to production contexts. I mean, why isn't it possible to design a language that is both quite fit for education & production? Is Python vs. Pyret really that big a difference in education outcomes? This is important for professors & TA's, educators, or enthusiast parents who wish to teach their children. All have to master a toolset and environment prior to teaching others, and maintaining the environment is also an ongoing cost. Some of this cost will be assuredly transferred to students, so we want to be sure that a "pedagogical" language without production traction has such powerful gains that it offsets the losses.
  - skrishnamurthi 10y ago
    Yes, it is a big difference, depending on what you're trying to teach. If you want to teach a conventional CS curriculum recognizable from the 80s, Python is great (though some people really prefer teaching with static types, which Python does not have and which are absurdly hard to add now). Here are several other differences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189513
- munificent 10y ago
  It's a real language if there are programs written in it where the where the main goal is what the program does when you run it, and not what the author learned writing it.
- _audakel 10y ago
  This is kinda like learning CS theory - kinda useful to keep in mind for other things, but never actually used. ie -> set theory, Finite automata, Turing machines etc...
petre 10y ago
Yup, I second that. Lua is much more simpler by comparison. Python is pretty easy as well. You can do lots of stuff with those two alone, not only on desktop/mobile platforms but on embedded devices as well (think eLua, Arduino, Pinguino).
cwyers 10y ago
There are so many examples of people who have learned a Lisp-family language in school and gone on to learn an industrial language later. This is a Lisp-family language with some syntactic sugar to make it look more Pythonic, basically.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Since when are Lisp-family and industrial languages not overlapping sets?
  - cwyers 10y ago
    I was trying to come up with something less loaded than parent's "real languages" phrasing, to describe the sorts of languages commonly used in industry, like Java and whatnot.
tvcgrid 10y ago
I think that's taking it a bit far. I especially don't see how being explicit about the problem you're solving (teaching computer science to newcomers in a collegiate setting) and focusing the effort towards that problem and iterating on the methods used to teach it (building better tools and iterating without importing unnecessary baggage) is "actively harmful." Simply looking at text in a different language is not going to impart magical understanding. Things you haven't actually used in a non trivial program will seem complex at the beginning. And sure, you can rationalize that away by treating this like a special case, but it's just a general bias in our brains. And depending on your background, certain languages may seem more complex than others due to simply lack of exposure. I'd rather propose putting it up to a damn test. Compare the computer science knowledge of outgoing students to other students in similar circumstances who were taught using a practical, heavily-used-in-industry language. Use a short test maybe, along with interviews to get at qualitative unknowns. The results of that could then be used to pick the best strategy to teaching going forward. But also, in general, why not try to solve the problem better, without pre-supposing all the sunk costs and existing ideas? And not everything needs to be on the freaking altar of industry either. It's not like your college implementation of heap sort is gonna be mainlined in a company and used forever more. What're you optimizing, the couple of weeks it'd take for someone who already knows this to learn python? You already saved it probably by skipping the b.s. until it actually became relevant to learn about.
- dom0 10y ago
  > I think that's taking it a bit far. I especially don't see how being explicit about the problem you're solving (teaching computer science to newcomers in a collegiate setting) and focusing the effort towards that problem and iterating on the methods used to teach it (building better tools and iterating without importing unnecessary baggage) is "actively harmful." It's pretty clear that I was specifically referring to the language at hand and not to general idea/concept. > ... needs this ... using it ...
skrishnamurthi 10y ago
Except there are numerous things Python can't do [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189513], and at least as much harm comes from trying to push the round Pythonic snake into a very square hole.
Confusion 10y ago
yet I find the code practically in-understandable and the language looks very complex Well, then I wonder what these 'quite some languages' that you worked with are, because the language really doesn't look that uncommon or complex to me. I was also involved in CS education [..] And the language is really the last problem there The people that created Pyret have been in CS education for decennia and have done a lot of research on 'how can we make CS education better'. Their conclusion was that the idiosyncrasies of the various industrial languages very much are the problem. You give to much weight to your own prejudices and subjective observations. The experimental results prove otherwise.

by dom0 10y ago

jswrenn 10y ago

What characteristics makes a programming language a "real" programming language?

petre 10y ago
- has a standard library - has library support for the usual stuff: strings, math, web, database, encoding, etc. - written using a lower level language (like C, Rust, C++), self hosted (Go) or a mix of those (Dlang, Perl6) - is actually used to build applications, has some sort of community around it (Rust, Perl, Python, Lua etc.) or some backing (Swift, Java, Go)
threatofrain 10y ago
The most important distinction would be that you don't have to make a transition from education contexts to production contexts. I mean, why isn't it possible to design a language that is both quite fit for education & production? Is Python vs. Pyret really that big a difference in education outcomes? This is important for professors & TA's, educators, or enthusiast parents who wish to teach their children. All have to master a toolset and environment prior to teaching others, and maintaining the environment is also an ongoing cost. Some of this cost will be assuredly transferred to students, so we want to be sure that a "pedagogical" language without production traction has such powerful gains that it offsets the losses.
- skrishnamurthi 10y ago
  Yes, it is a big difference, depending on what you're trying to teach. If you want to teach a conventional CS curriculum recognizable from the 80s, Python is great (though some people really prefer teaching with static types, which Python does not have and which are absurdly hard to add now). Here are several other differences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189513
munificent 10y ago
It's a real language if there are programs written in it where the where the main goal is what the program does when you run it, and not what the author learned writing it.
_audakel 10y ago
This is kinda like learning CS theory - kinda useful to keep in mind for other things, but never actually used. ie -> set theory, Finite automata, Turing machines etc...

petre 10y ago

Yup, I second that. Lua is much more simpler by comparison. Python is pretty easy as well. You can do lots of stuff with those two alone, not only on desktop/mobile platforms but on embedded devices as well (think eLua, Arduino, Pinguino).

cwyers 10y ago

There are so many examples of people who have learned a Lisp-family language in school and gone on to learn an industrial language later. This is a Lisp-family language with some syntactic sugar to make it look more Pythonic, basically.

dragonwriter 10y ago
Since when are Lisp-family and industrial languages not overlapping sets?
- cwyers 10y ago
  I was trying to come up with something less loaded than parent's "real languages" phrasing, to describe the sorts of languages commonly used in industry, like Java and whatnot.

tvcgrid 10y ago

I think that's taking it a bit far. I especially don't see how being explicit about the problem you're solving (teaching computer science to newcomers in a collegiate setting) and focusing the effort towards that problem and iterating on the methods used to teach it (building better tools and iterating without importing unnecessary baggage) is "actively harmful." Simply looking at text in a different language is not going to impart magical understanding. Things you haven't actually used in a non trivial program will seem complex at the beginning. And sure, you can rationalize that away by treating this like a special case, but it's just a general bias in our brains. And depending on your background, certain languages may seem more complex than others due to simply lack of exposure. I'd rather propose putting it up to a damn test. Compare the computer science knowledge of outgoing students to other students in similar circumstances who were taught using a practical, heavily-used-in-industry language. Use a short test maybe, along with interviews to get at qualitative unknowns. The results of that could then be used to pick the best strategy to teaching going forward. But also, in general, why not try to solve the problem better, without pre-supposing all the sunk costs and existing ideas? And not everything needs to be on the freaking altar of industry either. It's not like your college implementation of heap sort is gonna be mainlined in a company and used forever more. What're you optimizing, the couple of weeks it'd take for someone who already knows this to learn python? You already saved it probably by skipping the b.s. until it actually became relevant to learn about.

dom0 10y ago
> I think that's taking it a bit far. I especially don't see how being explicit about the problem you're solving (teaching computer science to newcomers in a collegiate setting) and focusing the effort towards that problem and iterating on the methods used to teach it (building better tools and iterating without importing unnecessary baggage) is "actively harmful." It's pretty clear that I was specifically referring to the language at hand and not to general idea/concept. > ... needs this ... using it ...

skrishnamurthi 10y ago

Except there are numerous things Python can't do [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189513], and at least as much harm comes from trying to push the round Pythonic snake into a very square hole.

Confusion 10y ago

yet I find the code practically in-understandable and the language looks very complex Well, then I wonder what these 'quite some languages' that you worked with are, because the language really doesn't look that uncommon or complex to me. I was also involved in CS education [..] And the language is really the last problem there The people that created Pyret have been in CS education for decennia and have done a lot of research on 'how can we make CS education better'. Their conclusion was that the idiosyncrasies of the various industrial languages very much are the problem. You give to much weight to your own prejudices and subjective observations. The experimental results prove otherwise.