14 ms·

8th – A secure, cross-platform, concatenative programming language

57 points by marttt 9y ago

phren0logy 9y ago
From the FAQ: >The main reason 8th is not GPL licensed is that I (Ron) have strong philosophical objections to being forced to give away my intellectual property. I disagree with the very tenet that "code should be free" in the GPL sense. Instead, I am of the opinion that you are free to have access to the 8th source code if you are willing to pay for that privilege. If not, not. >A secondary reason we do not follow the "open source" idea is that, frankly, over the many years we have used open-source projects, we have been struck by the simple fact that a great many of those projects are maintained only to the extent the author decides to do so. Thus for example, the venerable "gcc" compiler has severe bugs which were reported many years ago, but which will probably never be fixed. This, despite the fact that the code for it is available and anyone could fix it at will. Nobody has, probably nobody will -- because the gcc code is extraordinarily difficult to grok. So the "many eyes" argument for open-source and GPL is not overly convincing to me.
- bch 9y ago
  > Thus for example, the venerable "gcc" compiler has severe bugs which were reported many years ago, but which will probably never be fixed. This, despite the fact that the code for it is available and anyone could fix it at will. Nobody has, probably nobody will -- because the gcc code is extraordinarily difficult to grok. So the "many eyes" argument for open-source and GPL is not overly convincing to me. It looks like this really just identifies that "hard problems are hard", ignores any actual benefits, and incorrectly projects that onto a "license problem". Anyone is free to license how they like, but this isn't a strong argument for that.
- zem 9y ago
  on one hand, yes, I support their right to do whatever they want with their product. on the other hand, as a user I am not willing to invest any time or attention in a closed source language. also, having seen that philosophy essentially kill qi/shen, I am sceptical of it as a general approach. might work for some niches like game dev.
  - RandomBK 9y ago
    Indeed. Programming languages are a buyer's market. Sure, you can feel free to do whatever you want with your own language - just don't expect people to take it seriously.
  - TurboHaskal 9y ago
    What killed Qi/Shen? Didn't M. Tarver end up open sourcing it with a BSD like license to end up with nobody actually giving a f?
    - zem 9y ago
      yes, but there seems to be a certain window of opportunity for new language where they have enough mindshare for lots of early adopters to check them out, and if there are any barriers to adoption at that point the crowd tends to move on to the next new thing. sadly, fixing things later doesn't seem to work, though I wish it would. I can immediately think of shen, rebol and D as languages that have not done nearly as well as one might expect based purely on what they offered to PL enthusiasts, and I am sure there are lots more.
      - mncharity 9y ago
        > lots more Poplog - a hydra of Common Lisp, Standard ML, Prolog, and POP-11. Late 1980's, early 1990's, it seemed like it could change the world. With dreams of riches, it was kept closed source and commercial. It made a few million... and is dead and forgotten. Gotta wonder what the world might be like now, if they'd chosen glory over riches.
- nathan_long 9y ago
  Every programming language I've ever used has been open source. I have fixed small issues myself, and I know that I or someone else could fork them if the current maintainers quit. Whether developers have the right to the source is debatable. But personally, I wouldn't stake the life of my projects on a language (or database) whose life depends on one entity and their business model. And it seems to me that others feel the same way, and that the trends are toward OSS - .NET went open source, Oracle is giving way to PostgreSQL, Azure now supports Linux, etc.
- parenthephobia 9y ago
  > strong philosophical objections to being forced to give away my intellectual property Non-sequitar. If you used the GPL, you'd be doing so voluntarily, so you wouldn't be being "forced" to do anything. > a great many of those projects are maintained only to the extent the author decides to do so An issue that is even more pronounced with closed source software, where _all_ such projects are maintained only to the extent the author decides to do so.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  It seems like all of the problems the author claims with open source are simultaneously worse and more opaque with closed source.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  > A secondary reason we do not follow the "open source" idea is that, frankly, over the many years we have used open-source projects, we have been struck by the simple fact that a great many of those projects are maintained only to the extent the author decides to do so I'm sure this company will be maintained only to the extent the company can stay alive.
- DonaldFisk 9y ago
  I have a different objection to Open Source, that companies can profit from its use without paying its developers a penny, and usually do. My preferred licence is Shared Source: you get the source, and it's free (as in beer) for non-commercial use, and can be bought for commercial use.
ttul 9y ago
Wow, a closed source language. Good luck with that.
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  C# was close sourced for many years. It's who backs up the language, the tooling, the standard out of the box libraries, and documentation that makes a big difference in deciding the lifespan of a language. Then speed, stability etc (not in that order)
  - js8 9y ago
    Yes, but it was also owned by MS, a big company. I think closed source language is a terrible business model, especially considering that this model managed to kill several well-known programming languages (Smalltalk, Common Lisp).
    - erikj 9y ago
      Smalltalk was never owned by a single company since the first public release in 1980. Common Lisp was born in cooperation between Symbolics, Texas Instruments, Xerox, CMU and was never owned by a single company either. Neither of them exclusively had closed-source implementations.
    - cies 9y ago
      (..., Miranda, ColdFusion, Opa, ...)
      - zem 9y ago
        was opa closed source? I don't remember it being, at least not at the time I first encountered it.
        cies 9y ago
        It was closed for the first year, then went "open" but with AGPL therefor you cannot make non-opensource software with it if it has any users beyond yourself. It is a clear case of the license hampering the adoption of an otherwise good idea (JSX is so commonplace now, Opa had it already in 2010). But you are right, the actual close source era of Opa was very short.
RandomBK 9y ago
Some questions: * I see many claims of "cross-platform", but not a lot of substance to back it up. The FAQ is odd as well - it makes many claims that are simply not true. * Given that you chose to keep the source closed, what guarantees will I have that your language will continue to be supported if the company collapses? * What are you offering in a paid language that isn't already provided by an open alternative? * What is the state of the standard library or library ecosystem? Will I end up writing my own dependencies? Edit: Prior discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10344891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10344891 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3nthud/the_8th_programming_language_one_effort_multiple/?ref=share&ref_source=link https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3nthud/the_8th...
cordite 9y ago
Been said on other HN-announced languages.. but good luck having a search engine find relevant results for that language name.
beaconstudios 9y ago
did you google the name before deciding on it? The term "8th" already has a well-established association that you might not want attached to your company: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=8th https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=8th
vortico 9y ago
Code example? Also, being a cross platform GUI as well, how does it compare with GTK, Qt (backed by a much larger company Nokia), Tk, etc.?
- stronglikedan 9y ago
  https://8th-dev.com/samples.html https://8th-dev.com/samples.html (I have not yet looked at these to form an opinion of them. I was just attempting to answer OP's question.)
- zokier 9y ago
  > Qt (backed by a much larger company Nokia) Digia actually.
  - vortico 9y ago
    Looks like we're both out of date! (Although I was more out of date.) It's now the Qt Company since 2014.
feelin_googley 9y ago
"He developed the well respected Reva Forth, used by hobbyists around the world. " Reva Forth always seemed nice but I could never get it working on anything other than Windows. As such, I have little faith that "8th" will place any value on portability either, e.g., that it will be ported to BSD, Plan 9 or other RPi-compatible OS. Meanwhile, there are plenty of more portable, open source Forths to choose from. Example: ftp -4o cforthu.zip https://codeload.github.com/pahihu/cforthu/zip/master Some HN commenters are questioning the peculiar security claims. The author discloses that 8th depends on a number of third party libraries. Would this mean that each of those third parties would also have to make similar security claims to 8th? For example, 8th uses an HTML5 parsing library from Google called gumbo-parser. "Non-goals: Security. Gumbo was initially designed for a product that worked with trusted input files only. We're working to harden this and make sure that it behaves as expected even on malicious input, but for now, Gumbo should only be run on trusted input or within a sandbox. Gumbo underwent a number of security fixes and passed Google's security review as of version 0.9.1." source: https://github.com/google/gumbo-parser https://github.com/google/gumbo-parser It may be the case the only input parsed by 8th is trusted or "within a sandbox" but without the source code how would this be verified?
zokier 9y ago
I wonder how much money they would be willing to bet on their big claims of security. Somehow I don't imagine it would last long in the hands of a dedicated individual. https://8th-dev.com/security.html https://8th-dev.com/security.html
- rootw0rm 9y ago
  I'm interested in any encrypted 8th crackmes. Only Professional version and above can create them. I'm going to analyze the free version a bit tonight.
justinpombrio 9y ago
It has testimonials: https://8th-dev.com/kudos.html https://8th-dev.com/kudos.html And eight pillars: https://8th-dev.com/about8th.html https://8th-dev.com/about8th.html There's also a very detailed manual, that for some reason is hard to find on the website: https://8th-dev.com/manual.pdf https://8th-dev.com/manual.pdf
- RandomBK 9y ago
  Anonymous testimonials aren't worth the screen space they take up, especially coupled with the pathetic list of customers on the website.
maxpert 9y ago
At the risk of sounding negative may I ask, why would I even use a platform with really shady testimonials ( https://8th-dev.com/kudos.html https://8th-dev.com/kudos.html ) and something that might have no future?
aidenn0 9y ago
So I take it's supposed to be "twice as good as forth?"
- craftyguy 9y ago
  1/8th is 1/2 as much as 1/4th
deckar01 9y ago
> 8th lets you choose, and offers strong protection if needed. ... The build tool compress your program code and all its required bits and pieces into a ZIP-format blob which is unpacked, compiled and run on the device when needed. It is difficult to modify the ZIP-data without corrupting the deployment package. I'm afraid to ask how the paid encryption works.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  Also, unless they're doing something interesting, zips really aren't hard to modify. See also: Android APKs, also just fancy zip files, also easy to modify (though, granted, you have to re-sign the result).
fabiofzero 9y ago
If it isn't open source it doesn't matter.
- artorias 9y ago
  Lol, just pay 3 grand and you get the source code bro
yellowapple 9y ago
There are lots of free-and-open-source languages already. A proprietary one seems like a non-starter to me.
- TeddyDD 9y ago
  Yeah, I can't imagine who would risk using this in production.
mncharity 9y ago
http://concatenative.org/ http://concatenative.org/ language wiki. Nice to see the Factor repo is still getting commits.
MrMorden 9y ago
Let's look at the license (https://8th-dev.com/com-license.html https://8th-dev.com/com-license.html): "Except as otherwise specifically permitted in this Agreement, you may not: [...] (h) publish any results of benchmark tests run on the Software to a third party without Licensor’s prior written consent" So we know that it's slow as crap, which is especially problematic given the author's claims of suitability for embedded development, and the author also thinks that nobody's going to notice. (What's next, an NDA to get the proposed license?) There's not a big enough cup to hold all the nope.
- CapacitorSet 9y ago
  Honestly, it might even be the fastest language ever, but if the license prohibits something as basic as sharing benchmarks there is something quite fishy and dystopic.
- xelxebar 9y ago
  Would this be likely to hold up in court at all? It seems like this kind of thing would fall under the purview of defamation law, and benchmarks are essentially "just facts" so about as safe as you can get. I imagine they'd have to show that you maliciously construed the benchmark itself or something to make any case stick.
  - dozzie 9y ago
    > Would this be likely to hold up in court at all? Ask Oracle customers, they are tied by the same prohibition.
  - unixhero 9y ago
    A license is an obligation the user falls under legally when taking official use of a software.
    - xelxebar 9y ago
      Sure, but licences are not free to obligate anything at all. A lincense cannot legally obligate otherwise illegal behaviour, for example. It just wouldn't hold up in court. My question is about how far licenses can circumscribe non-illegal behaviour. There are clear pathological cases that probably wouldn't hold up in court either. What if a software contract says that you must turn over your first born child? I image that the software company would have to provide some very good reasons for including such a clause. So, how far can a license actually go?
Brian_K_White 9y ago
This has less import to the world than a cat video. Never getting that 5 minutes back.

57 points by marttt 9y ago

From the FAQ: >The main reason 8th is not GPL licensed is that I (Ron) have strong philosophical objections to being forced to give away my intellectual property. I disagree with the very tenet that "code should be free" in the GPL sense. Instead, I am of the opinion that you are free to have access to the 8th source code if you are willing to pay for that privilege. If not, not. >A secondary reason we do not follow the "open source" idea is that, frankly, over the many years we have used open-source projects, we have been struck by the simple fact that a great many of those projects are maintained only to the extent the author decides to do so. Thus for example, the venerable "gcc" compiler has severe bugs which were reported many years ago, but which will probably never be fixed. This, despite the fact that the code for it is available and anyone could fix it at will. Nobody has, probably nobody will -- because the gcc code is extraordinarily difficult to grok. So the "many eyes" argument for open-source and GPL is not overly convincing to me.

bch 9y ago
> Thus for example, the venerable "gcc" compiler has severe bugs which were reported many years ago, but which will probably never be fixed. This, despite the fact that the code for it is available and anyone could fix it at will. Nobody has, probably nobody will -- because the gcc code is extraordinarily difficult to grok. So the "many eyes" argument for open-source and GPL is not overly convincing to me. It looks like this really just identifies that "hard problems are hard", ignores any actual benefits, and incorrectly projects that onto a "license problem". Anyone is free to license how they like, but this isn't a strong argument for that.
zem 9y ago
on one hand, yes, I support their right to do whatever they want with their product. on the other hand, as a user I am not willing to invest any time or attention in a closed source language. also, having seen that philosophy essentially kill qi/shen, I am sceptical of it as a general approach. might work for some niches like game dev.
- RandomBK 9y ago
  Indeed. Programming languages are a buyer's market. Sure, you can feel free to do whatever you want with your own language - just don't expect people to take it seriously.
- TurboHaskal 9y ago
  What killed Qi/Shen? Didn't M. Tarver end up open sourcing it with a BSD like license to end up with nobody actually giving a f?
  - zem 9y ago
    yes, but there seems to be a certain window of opportunity for new language where they have enough mindshare for lots of early adopters to check them out, and if there are any barriers to adoption at that point the crowd tends to move on to the next new thing. sadly, fixing things later doesn't seem to work, though I wish it would. I can immediately think of shen, rebol and D as languages that have not done nearly as well as one might expect based purely on what they offered to PL enthusiasts, and I am sure there are lots more.
    - mncharity 9y ago
      > lots more Poplog - a hydra of Common Lisp, Standard ML, Prolog, and POP-11. Late 1980's, early 1990's, it seemed like it could change the world. With dreams of riches, it was kept closed source and commercial. It made a few million... and is dead and forgotten. Gotta wonder what the world might be like now, if they'd chosen glory over riches.
nathan_long 9y ago
Every programming language I've ever used has been open source. I have fixed small issues myself, and I know that I or someone else could fork them if the current maintainers quit. Whether developers have the right to the source is debatable. But personally, I wouldn't stake the life of my projects on a language (or database) whose life depends on one entity and their business model. And it seems to me that others feel the same way, and that the trends are toward OSS - .NET went open source, Oracle is giving way to PostgreSQL, Azure now supports Linux, etc.
parenthephobia 9y ago
> strong philosophical objections to being forced to give away my intellectual property Non-sequitar. If you used the GPL, you'd be doing so voluntarily, so you wouldn't be being "forced" to do anything. > a great many of those projects are maintained only to the extent the author decides to do so An issue that is even more pronounced with closed source software, where _all_ such projects are maintained only to the extent the author decides to do so.
microcolonel 9y ago
It seems like all of the problems the author claims with open source are simultaneously worse and more opaque with closed source.
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
> A secondary reason we do not follow the "open source" idea is that, frankly, over the many years we have used open-source projects, we have been struck by the simple fact that a great many of those projects are maintained only to the extent the author decides to do so I'm sure this company will be maintained only to the extent the company can stay alive.
DonaldFisk 9y ago
I have a different objection to Open Source, that companies can profit from its use without paying its developers a penny, and usually do. My preferred licence is Shared Source: you get the source, and it's free (as in beer) for non-commercial use, and can be bought for commercial use.

ttul 9y ago

Wow, a closed source language. Good luck with that.

giancarlostoro 9y ago
C# was close sourced for many years. It's who backs up the language, the tooling, the standard out of the box libraries, and documentation that makes a big difference in deciding the lifespan of a language. Then speed, stability etc (not in that order)
- js8 9y ago
  Yes, but it was also owned by MS, a big company. I think closed source language is a terrible business model, especially considering that this model managed to kill several well-known programming languages (Smalltalk, Common Lisp).
  - erikj 9y ago
    Smalltalk was never owned by a single company since the first public release in 1980. Common Lisp was born in cooperation between Symbolics, Texas Instruments, Xerox, CMU and was never owned by a single company either. Neither of them exclusively had closed-source implementations.
  - cies 9y ago
    (..., Miranda, ColdFusion, Opa, ...)
    - zem 9y ago
      was opa closed source? I don't remember it being, at least not at the time I first encountered it.
      - cies 9y ago
        It was closed for the first year, then went "open" but with AGPL therefor you cannot make non-opensource software with it if it has any users beyond yourself. It is a clear case of the license hampering the adoption of an otherwise good idea (JSX is so commonplace now, Opa had it already in 2010). But you are right, the actual close source era of Opa was very short.

RandomBK 9y ago

Some questions: * I see many claims of "cross-platform", but not a lot of substance to back it up. The FAQ is odd as well - it makes many claims that are simply not true. * Given that you chose to keep the source closed, what guarantees will I have that your language will continue to be supported if the company collapses? * What are you offering in a paid language that isn't already provided by an open alternative? * What is the state of the standard library or library ecosystem? Will I end up writing my own dependencies? Edit: Prior discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10344891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10344891 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3nthud/the_8th_programming_language_one_effort_multiple/?ref=share&ref_source=link https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3nthud/the_8th...

cordite 9y ago

Been said on other HN-announced languages.. but good luck having a search engine find relevant results for that language name.

beaconstudios 9y ago

did you google the name before deciding on it? The term "8th" already has a well-established association that you might not want attached to your company: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=8th https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=8th

vortico 9y ago

Code example? Also, being a cross platform GUI as well, how does it compare with GTK, Qt (backed by a much larger company Nokia), Tk, etc.?

stronglikedan 9y ago
https://8th-dev.com/samples.html https://8th-dev.com/samples.html (I have not yet looked at these to form an opinion of them. I was just attempting to answer OP's question.)
zokier 9y ago
> Qt (backed by a much larger company Nokia) Digia actually.
- vortico 9y ago
  Looks like we're both out of date! (Although I was more out of date.) It's now the Qt Company since 2014.

feelin_googley 9y ago

"He developed the well respected Reva Forth, used by hobbyists around the world. " Reva Forth always seemed nice but I could never get it working on anything other than Windows. As such, I have little faith that "8th" will place any value on portability either, e.g., that it will be ported to BSD, Plan 9 or other RPi-compatible OS. Meanwhile, there are plenty of more portable, open source Forths to choose from. Example: ftp -4o cforthu.zip https://codeload.github.com/pahihu/cforthu/zip/master Some HN commenters are questioning the peculiar security claims. The author discloses that 8th depends on a number of third party libraries. Would this mean that each of those third parties would also have to make similar security claims to 8th? For example, 8th uses an HTML5 parsing library from Google called gumbo-parser. "Non-goals: Security. Gumbo was initially designed for a product that worked with trusted input files only. We're working to harden this and make sure that it behaves as expected even on malicious input, but for now, Gumbo should only be run on trusted input or within a sandbox. Gumbo underwent a number of security fixes and passed Google's security review as of version 0.9.1." source: https://github.com/google/gumbo-parser https://github.com/google/gumbo-parser It may be the case the only input parsed by 8th is trusted or "within a sandbox" but without the source code how would this be verified?

zokier 9y ago

I wonder how much money they would be willing to bet on their big claims of security. Somehow I don't imagine it would last long in the hands of a dedicated individual. https://8th-dev.com/security.html https://8th-dev.com/security.html

rootw0rm 9y ago
I'm interested in any encrypted 8th crackmes. Only Professional version and above can create them. I'm going to analyze the free version a bit tonight.

justinpombrio 9y ago

It has testimonials: https://8th-dev.com/kudos.html https://8th-dev.com/kudos.html And eight pillars: https://8th-dev.com/about8th.html https://8th-dev.com/about8th.html There's also a very detailed manual, that for some reason is hard to find on the website: https://8th-dev.com/manual.pdf https://8th-dev.com/manual.pdf

RandomBK 9y ago
Anonymous testimonials aren't worth the screen space they take up, especially coupled with the pathetic list of customers on the website.

maxpert 9y ago

At the risk of sounding negative may I ask, why would I even use a platform with really shady testimonials ( https://8th-dev.com/kudos.html https://8th-dev.com/kudos.html ) and something that might have no future?

aidenn0 9y ago

So I take it's supposed to be "twice as good as forth?"

craftyguy 9y ago
1/8th is 1/2 as much as 1/4th

deckar01 9y ago

> 8th lets you choose, and offers strong protection if needed. ... The build tool compress your program code and all its required bits and pieces into a ZIP-format blob which is unpacked, compiled and run on the device when needed. It is difficult to modify the ZIP-data without corrupting the deployment package. I'm afraid to ask how the paid encryption works.

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
Also, unless they're doing something interesting, zips really aren't hard to modify. See also: Android APKs, also just fancy zip files, also easy to modify (though, granted, you have to re-sign the result).

fabiofzero 9y ago

If it isn't open source it doesn't matter.

artorias 9y ago
Lol, just pay 3 grand and you get the source code bro

yellowapple 9y ago

There are lots of free-and-open-source languages already. A proprietary one seems like a non-starter to me.

TeddyDD 9y ago
Yeah, I can't imagine who would risk using this in production.

mncharity 9y ago

http://concatenative.org/ http://concatenative.org/ language wiki. Nice to see the Factor repo is still getting commits.

MrMorden 9y ago

Let's look at the license (https://8th-dev.com/com-license.html https://8th-dev.com/com-license.html): "Except as otherwise specifically permitted in this Agreement, you may not: [...] (h) publish any results of benchmark tests run on the Software to a third party without Licensor’s prior written consent" So we know that it's slow as crap, which is especially problematic given the author's claims of suitability for embedded development, and the author also thinks that nobody's going to notice. (What's next, an NDA to get the proposed license?) There's not a big enough cup to hold all the nope.

CapacitorSet 9y ago
Honestly, it might even be the fastest language ever, but if the license prohibits something as basic as sharing benchmarks there is something quite fishy and dystopic.
xelxebar 9y ago
Would this be likely to hold up in court at all? It seems like this kind of thing would fall under the purview of defamation law, and benchmarks are essentially "just facts" so about as safe as you can get. I imagine they'd have to show that you maliciously construed the benchmark itself or something to make any case stick.
- dozzie 9y ago
  > Would this be likely to hold up in court at all? Ask Oracle customers, they are tied by the same prohibition.
- unixhero 9y ago
  A license is an obligation the user falls under legally when taking official use of a software.
  - xelxebar 9y ago
    Sure, but licences are not free to obligate anything at all. A lincense cannot legally obligate otherwise illegal behaviour, for example. It just wouldn't hold up in court. My question is about how far licenses can circumscribe non-illegal behaviour. There are clear pathological cases that probably wouldn't hold up in court either. What if a software contract says that you must turn over your first born child? I image that the software company would have to provide some very good reasons for including such a clause. So, how far can a license actually go?

Brian_K_White 9y ago

This has less import to the world than a cat video. Never getting that 5 minutes back.