3 ms·

Rust is designed to be a systems programming language in that it does not ship with a garbage collector. Pony does have a garbage collector. Comparing their mem

Rust is designed to be a systems programming language in that it does not ship with a garbage collector. Pony does have a garbage collector. Comparing their memory safety is comparing very different categories of languages. It would be better to compare pony's memory safety to a GC language: go, Java, C#, Haskell, etc.

pjmlp 9y ago
In what category would you put Oberon, Modula-3, Sing#, System C#?
- coldtea 9y ago
  The first three surely in the "nobody uses and don't see that changing anytime soon" category (haven't heard of the last one, special systems-programming C# edition?)
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    The C# dialect used in Midori. As for the rest, IT world is full of political murders of nice technology. As Alan Kay puts it, pop culture driven development.
    - jonaf 9y ago
      Please tell me that the referenced C# dialect used in Midori is available in some form for use, research or general learning? This would really make my week!!
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Just scattered information. You have Joe Duffy's blog entries about Midori and one entry back when it was still called M#. Then there are the little pieces that came to C# from it. Namely async/await, TPL, the MDIL compiler on Windows 8.x, the .NET Native compiler for UWP, the improved GC control in .NET 4.6 and the planned features for C# 7.1, 7.2 and 8.0 related to more mechanical sympathy.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Edit isn't allowed any longer, so here are some extra informations. Joe Duffy's blog about Midori http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ Joe's blog entry about what was known as M# at the time http://joeduffyblog.com/2013/12/27/csharp-for-systems-programming/ http://joeduffyblog.com/2013/12/27/csharp-for-systems-progra... Joe's presentation at QCon 2015, "Safe Systems Programming in C# and .NET" https://www.infoq.com/presentations/csharp-systems-programming https://www.infoq.com/presentations/csharp-systems-programmi... Channel 9 presentations about MDIL compiler for Windows 8.x https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/3-005 https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/3-005 https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Mani-Ramaswamy-and-Peter-Sollich-Inside-Compiler-in-the-Cloud-and-MDIL https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Mani-Ramaswamy-an... Channel 9 presentations about .NET Native https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Inside-NET-Native https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Inside-NET-Native https://channel9.msdn.com/events/dotnetConf/2014/-NET-Native-Deep-Dive https://channel9.msdn.com/events/dotnetConf/2014/-NET-Native... GC Improvements on .NET 4.6, including memory guarantees for performance critical sections https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.gc.trystartnogcregion https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.gc.trysta... https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/alphageek/2017/01/24/significant-garbage-collector-changes-in-net-4-6-2/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/alphageek/2017/01/24/signif... C# roadmap for 7.1, 7.2 and 8.0 with more memory friendly features https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/Language%20Feature%20Status.md https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/Language%2... Joe is presenting a keynote at Rustconf, about memory safe systems programming. http://rustconf.com/program.html#joe http://rustconf.com/program.html#joe
    - Ericson2314 9y ago
      I agree that it's tragic how little alternative systems are known now. That said, linguistically, sub-structural languages (which can avoid GC) are quite different, regardless of intended usescases.
unscaled 9y ago
I didn't read the docs in depth, but it seems that the extra safety Pony adds over Go, Java and C# is null-dereference safety, data race safety, exception safety and deadlock safety. Go, Java and C# all suffer from all the problem above. Go in particular (due to confusing slicing semantics and dearth of immutable data structures) and C# slightly less (due to a lot of syntactic sugar to help you with null-safety). Haskell is a slightly different beast. I assume that with idiomatic Haskell, except for an occasional runtime error due to bad program logic, you'll rarely run into these issues.

pjmlp 9y ago

In what category would you put Oberon, Modula-3, Sing#, System C#?

coldtea 9y ago
The first three surely in the "nobody uses and don't see that changing anytime soon" category (haven't heard of the last one, special systems-programming C# edition?)
- pjmlp 9y ago
  The C# dialect used in Midori. As for the rest, IT world is full of political murders of nice technology. As Alan Kay puts it, pop culture driven development.
  - jonaf 9y ago
    Please tell me that the referenced C# dialect used in Midori is available in some form for use, research or general learning? This would really make my week!!
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Just scattered information. You have Joe Duffy's blog entries about Midori and one entry back when it was still called M#. Then there are the little pieces that came to C# from it. Namely async/await, TPL, the MDIL compiler on Windows 8.x, the .NET Native compiler for UWP, the improved GC control in .NET 4.6 and the planned features for C# 7.1, 7.2 and 8.0 related to more mechanical sympathy.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Edit isn't allowed any longer, so here are some extra informations. Joe Duffy's blog about Midori http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ Joe's blog entry about what was known as M# at the time http://joeduffyblog.com/2013/12/27/csharp-for-systems-programming/ http://joeduffyblog.com/2013/12/27/csharp-for-systems-progra... Joe's presentation at QCon 2015, "Safe Systems Programming in C# and .NET" https://www.infoq.com/presentations/csharp-systems-programming https://www.infoq.com/presentations/csharp-systems-programmi... Channel 9 presentations about MDIL compiler for Windows 8.x https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/3-005 https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/3-005 https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Mani-Ramaswamy-and-Peter-Sollich-Inside-Compiler-in-the-Cloud-and-MDIL https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Mani-Ramaswamy-an... Channel 9 presentations about .NET Native https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Inside-NET-Native https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Inside-NET-Native https://channel9.msdn.com/events/dotnetConf/2014/-NET-Native-Deep-Dive https://channel9.msdn.com/events/dotnetConf/2014/-NET-Native... GC Improvements on .NET 4.6, including memory guarantees for performance critical sections https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.gc.trystartnogcregion https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.gc.trysta... https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/alphageek/2017/01/24/significant-garbage-collector-changes-in-net-4-6-2/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/alphageek/2017/01/24/signif... C# roadmap for 7.1, 7.2 and 8.0 with more memory friendly features https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/Language%20Feature%20Status.md https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/Language%2... Joe is presenting a keynote at Rustconf, about memory safe systems programming. http://rustconf.com/program.html#joe http://rustconf.com/program.html#joe
  - Ericson2314 9y ago
    I agree that it's tragic how little alternative systems are known now. That said, linguistically, sub-structural languages (which can avoid GC) are quite different, regardless of intended usescases.

unscaled 9y ago

I didn't read the docs in depth, but it seems that the extra safety Pony adds over Go, Java and C# is null-dereference safety, data race safety, exception safety and deadlock safety. Go, Java and C# all suffer from all the problem above. Go in particular (due to confusing slicing semantics and dearth of immutable data structures) and C# slightly less (due to a lot of syntactic sugar to help you with null-safety). Haskell is a slightly different beast. I assume that with idiomatic Haskell, except for an occasional runtime error due to bad program logic, you'll rarely run into these issues.