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As usual, nobody has said "capability" yet, which is unfortunate, because one of Capn's biggest strengths is that it embodies the object-capability model and is

As usual, nobody has said "capability" yet, which is unfortunate, because one of Capn's biggest strengths is that it embodies the object-capability model and is cap-safe as a result. Edit: Why does this matter? Well, first, it matters because so little software is capability-safe. Capn's RPC subsystem is based directly upon E's CapTP protocol. (E is the classic capability-safe language.) As a result, the security guarantees afforded by cap-safe construction are extended across the wire to cover the entire distributed system. This security guarantee holds even if not every component of individual nodes is cap-safe, and that's how Sandstorm works. Continuing on, there's also historical stuff going on. HN loves JSON; JSON is based on E's DataL mini-language for data serialization. HN loves ECMAScript; ES's technical committee is steered by ex-E language designers who have been porting features from E into ES.

placeybordeaux 9y ago
Could you elaborate?
- pas 9y ago
  I think the built in security of "you can't call if you don't know the address" coupled with addresses being first-class (so you can send the address of a function to a client, hereby granting the capability): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14244540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14244540 this is very similar to what the new bus1 ipc author wants to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zN0b6BfgLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zN0b6BfgLY
kentonv 9y ago
The trouble is, we capability people have come up with our own language full of jargon that no one else knows, and I think it confuses people. When talking to people new to the idea, I try to use the term "object reference" or maybe "endpoint reference" rather than "capability", to be more approachable.
ludwigvan 9y ago
Is this the E language you are referring to? Had never heard of it before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language)
- kentonv 9y ago
  Yes. It's not widely known because it was somewhat of a research language, never really production ready. But, it presented clean solutions to a huge number of hard problems, and as a result has been pretty influential behind the scenes. E.g. Javascript promises are directly inspired by E.

placeybordeaux 9y ago

Could you elaborate?

pas 9y ago
I think the built in security of "you can't call if you don't know the address" coupled with addresses being first-class (so you can send the address of a function to a client, hereby granting the capability): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14244540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14244540 this is very similar to what the new bus1 ipc author wants to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zN0b6BfgLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zN0b6BfgLY

kentonv 9y ago

The trouble is, we capability people have come up with our own language full of jargon that no one else knows, and I think it confuses people. When talking to people new to the idea, I try to use the term "object reference" or maybe "endpoint reference" rather than "capability", to be more approachable.

ludwigvan 9y ago

Is this the E language you are referring to? Had never heard of it before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language)

kentonv 9y ago
Yes. It's not widely known because it was somewhat of a research language, never really production ready. But, it presented clean solutions to a huge number of hard problems, and as a result has been pretty influential behind the scenes. E.g. Javascript promises are directly inspired by E.