4 ms·

Which leads us to ask, "Where are the revolutionaries?" It used to be the younger generation, around college-age, would rethink their parents' systems: politic

Which leads us to ask, "Where are the revolutionaries?" It used to be the younger generation, around college-age, would rethink their parents' systems: political, business, etc. These kids would look at the buildings around them and imagine what could be accomplished in razing those buildings and creating a new foundation. I don't see that anymore. I see college-aged kids simply wanting to add a new floor on top of a very rickety shack that should have been discarded ages ago. Ironically, the people writing these types of manifestos for Computer Science are almost exclusively older. They often wrote that first foundational layer and know that it needs to be overhauled. By the way, I would phrase it more that "any righteous programming language is also an operating system," and that "no righteous operating system operates on files, so no righteous programming language is coded in files." Data that is not stored or accessed as data eventually will be. It's true we've tried many variations on these themes in the past, but if we do the logical syllogism in our heads, we come invariably to the conclusion this is how the future should be. We know these things. So why give up? What does failure mean other than that we need to continue trying? It infuriates me that we don't try -- when people say "we've tried everything and there's no way forward." No, we're just lazy. Charles Duell never actually said in 1899 that "everything has already been invented," yet, oh my God, we can't stop saying it now. So I'm going to ask again, "Where are the revolutionaries?"

chubot 10y ago
It absolutely does need to be overhauled, but the problem is that people don't agree on the direction. I think most of your ideas are profoundly mistaken, and have been disproven by history. I'm sure you think my ideas are wrong too. I think that people tend to dismiss the success or failure of certain systems as luck or even marketing, rather than deeply reflecting on the intrinsic properties of those systems that led them to be adopted or not adopted. Unix and the web have lots of flaws, but they're not an accident of history. They have fundamental architectural properties that made them succeed. (In particular, REST is the same idea architecturally as Unix/Plan 9 style file systems. Long story, because it's basically avoiding O(m*n) problems in the ecosystem.) You also have to accept evolution as a fundamental force in computing (as Linus Torvalds does). To ignore it is to set yourself up for failure and frustration. After all, humans are by no means the optimal living being either, but they're the best that evolution came up with. And as I said in my other post, "revolutionary" ideas tend to just add to the pile. They fail to meet their expectations and then Unix subsumes them. It's almost an economic inevitability. And Linux WAS revolutionary, if you compare to to Microsoft. The first couple decades of my life were DOS and Windows based, so from that perspective the revolution happened. Microsoft is porting all their stuff to Linux now. http://www.revolution-os.com/ http://www.revolution-os.com/ If you want a single language OS, check out Mirage: https://mirage.io/ https://mirage.io/ . I know somebody is going to say "I don't like OCaml". Now you understand why Unix dominates: it supports heterogeneity. Even Mirage can't really get rid of Unix, because it runs on Xen, which typically runs on Linux.
- david927 10y ago
  I recognize that we disagree and I respect your opinion, I would just like to add a bit more: > "have been disproven by history." I guess that's my point. I don't think we've had enough history to be conclusive yet. I keep hearing this, over and over, and it's the equivalent of "heavier than air objects can't fly -- it's been proven in attempt after attempt." In my opinion, the reason why there are thousands of programming languages, for example, and is not because we can't agree on them; it's because it hasn't been solved yet. No language is good enough, so we keep trying. In the late 1990's there were seemingly hundreds of search engines. Google/Page Rank came along and all the other search engines went away almost overnight. > "revolutionary" ideas tend to just add to the pile They do until they don't. All those crazy attempts at flight were truly crazy, until they lead to flight. We're at the beginning of history, not the end of it.
  - taserian 10y ago
    Search engines are comparable in terms of how successful they are at their unique task. Languages? What metric are you going to use that equally applicable to all tasks? Think of it as vehicles and their different purposes. Would you support condensing all vehicles to one, so that one vehicle has to both haul and mix concrete and take your kids to get ice cream?
    - david927 10y ago
      I think systems programming would continue to be separate. I left it off because it amounts to a small fraction of in terms of usage in terms of total code written (and I consider it to be able to be grouped in with hardware frankly). The rest is application programming, and yes, when it's right, it will absolutely consolidate: There will be one "language". Sure, the current conventional wisdom is that languages are the "different tools in the toolbox." I know. My statement wasn't borne out of ignorance. What I'm saying is that kind of thinking is what's holding us back. What is a program? Is it expressive text? Is it, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" No, of course not. There's no narrative. We use text flow for instruction flow but that's coincidence. We are acutely aware that programs are discrete instructions. Code is data. I made a statement above. I'll repeat it because it's important. It's a law: Data that is not stored or accessed as data eventually will be. Any programming language that uses text files will eventually go away. There will be one "language" eventually because the natural inclination of data is one representation. There will always be a market for new widgets to manipulate data or find insight in data, of course, but there will be one language -- and it will be data. It's the law. Now I should admit, it's not that we haven't tried. We've tried many times and failed. What I'm saying is that if we come to a conclusion for a destination then there is no other choice but to make that the target.
gavanwoolery 10y ago
Great reply David and my sentiments match exactly. BTW took a peek at your profile and it led me to Kayia, and this bit of text: "No instruction is stored in its textual form, but instead it is interpreted as you type and stored directly in its AST form and exposed in the same way as the data. This allows you to query code identically as you would query data, and look at it in various aspects and layers." This is interesting to me because I designed something identical about 10 years ago (and who knows who else has) when I was designing my first proprietary compiler. I wanted to be able to manipulate tokens with the same ease that you might in a spreadsheet (which was probably an arbitrary goal but seemed cool at the time).
- david927 10y ago
  I'm so happy to hear that. I'll reach out to you and let you know what's coming next for Kayia.
  - gavanwoolery 10y ago
    Sounds good - gavanw@gmail.com

chubot 10y ago

It absolutely does need to be overhauled, but the problem is that people don't agree on the direction. I think most of your ideas are profoundly mistaken, and have been disproven by history. I'm sure you think my ideas are wrong too. I think that people tend to dismiss the success or failure of certain systems as luck or even marketing, rather than deeply reflecting on the intrinsic properties of those systems that led them to be adopted or not adopted. Unix and the web have lots of flaws, but they're not an accident of history. They have fundamental architectural properties that made them succeed. (In particular, REST is the same idea architecturally as Unix/Plan 9 style file systems. Long story, because it's basically avoiding O(m*n) problems in the ecosystem.) You also have to accept evolution as a fundamental force in computing (as Linus Torvalds does). To ignore it is to set yourself up for failure and frustration. After all, humans are by no means the optimal living being either, but they're the best that evolution came up with. And as I said in my other post, "revolutionary" ideas tend to just add to the pile. They fail to meet their expectations and then Unix subsumes them. It's almost an economic inevitability. And Linux WAS revolutionary, if you compare to to Microsoft. The first couple decades of my life were DOS and Windows based, so from that perspective the revolution happened. Microsoft is porting all their stuff to Linux now. http://www.revolution-os.com/ http://www.revolution-os.com/ If you want a single language OS, check out Mirage: https://mirage.io/ https://mirage.io/ . I know somebody is going to say "I don't like OCaml". Now you understand why Unix dominates: it supports heterogeneity. Even Mirage can't really get rid of Unix, because it runs on Xen, which typically runs on Linux.

david927 10y ago
I recognize that we disagree and I respect your opinion, I would just like to add a bit more: > "have been disproven by history." I guess that's my point. I don't think we've had enough history to be conclusive yet. I keep hearing this, over and over, and it's the equivalent of "heavier than air objects can't fly -- it's been proven in attempt after attempt." In my opinion, the reason why there are thousands of programming languages, for example, and is not because we can't agree on them; it's because it hasn't been solved yet. No language is good enough, so we keep trying. In the late 1990's there were seemingly hundreds of search engines. Google/Page Rank came along and all the other search engines went away almost overnight. > "revolutionary" ideas tend to just add to the pile They do until they don't. All those crazy attempts at flight were truly crazy, until they lead to flight. We're at the beginning of history, not the end of it.
- taserian 10y ago
  Search engines are comparable in terms of how successful they are at their unique task. Languages? What metric are you going to use that equally applicable to all tasks? Think of it as vehicles and their different purposes. Would you support condensing all vehicles to one, so that one vehicle has to both haul and mix concrete and take your kids to get ice cream?
  - david927 10y ago
    I think systems programming would continue to be separate. I left it off because it amounts to a small fraction of in terms of usage in terms of total code written (and I consider it to be able to be grouped in with hardware frankly). The rest is application programming, and yes, when it's right, it will absolutely consolidate: There will be one "language". Sure, the current conventional wisdom is that languages are the "different tools in the toolbox." I know. My statement wasn't borne out of ignorance. What I'm saying is that kind of thinking is what's holding us back. What is a program? Is it expressive text? Is it, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" No, of course not. There's no narrative. We use text flow for instruction flow but that's coincidence. We are acutely aware that programs are discrete instructions. Code is data. I made a statement above. I'll repeat it because it's important. It's a law: Data that is not stored or accessed as data eventually will be. Any programming language that uses text files will eventually go away. There will be one "language" eventually because the natural inclination of data is one representation. There will always be a market for new widgets to manipulate data or find insight in data, of course, but there will be one language -- and it will be data. It's the law. Now I should admit, it's not that we haven't tried. We've tried many times and failed. What I'm saying is that if we come to a conclusion for a destination then there is no other choice but to make that the target.

gavanwoolery 10y ago

Great reply David and my sentiments match exactly. BTW took a peek at your profile and it led me to Kayia, and this bit of text: "No instruction is stored in its textual form, but instead it is interpreted as you type and stored directly in its AST form and exposed in the same way as the data. This allows you to query code identically as you would query data, and look at it in various aspects and layers." This is interesting to me because I designed something identical about 10 years ago (and who knows who else has) when I was designing my first proprietary compiler. I wanted to be able to manipulate tokens with the same ease that you might in a spreadsheet (which was probably an arbitrary goal but seemed cool at the time).

david927 10y ago
I'm so happy to hear that. I'll reach out to you and let you know what's coming next for Kayia.
- gavanwoolery 10y ago
  Sounds good - gavanw@gmail.com