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Good question. Conceptually, Dark is most similar to your django/aws example. There's a lot more types, though in a really good way. We're aiming for all the a

Good question. Conceptually, Dark is most similar to your django/aws example. There's a lot more types, though in a really good way. We're aiming for all the advantages of static typing, coupled with all the advantages of dynamic typing. For example, you use the same types all the way from DB schemas to API validation.

throwawayjava 9y ago
> We're aiming for all the advantages of static typing, coupled with all the advantages of dynamic typing. For example, you use the same types all the way from DB schemas to API validation. Sounds like what Microsoft tried to do with the .NET ecosystem, but with cloud integration (which Microsoft should be doing for their own cloud) and API validation. Someone needs to actually succeed at doing this. Most of the type-checking/inference problems in this domain are decidable -- it's really a tooling/tooling integration problem. Creating a single unified tool instead of having developers clobber together libraries (JSON schema validator, ORM, MVC framework, deployment workflow for all of that, etc.) would be a huge value-add. Suggestion: code example/screenshot/workflow video on your homepage, and a link to your homepage in the advert. Nearly every programming language/library out there has a concise "hello, world" example on their homepage. Nearly every software development tool has a screenshot of sorts on their homepage. Those examples are worth a million words. Even an appropriately caveated "Wizard of Oz" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment) demo would go a long way.
- pbiggar 9y ago
  Thanks! If you have any things you think we should read, would love to see it. Internally, we build a Real World app (https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld) and some other stuff. It taught us a lot but not nearly as much as a real developer will :)
projectramo 9y ago
Thanks for clarifying. Can you share what language darklang uses (or what language it is based off of)? I imagine if it is a language the startup already uses, it would lower the risk of trying it.
- pbiggar 9y ago
  TBH, we took inspiration from a ton of different places, including a lot from Clojure, Python, Elm and Rust, as well as Rails and Django. Dark is probably closest to an ML (like OCaml/ReasonML or Elm), with some interesting twists that we think will greatly increase productivity and decrease complexity, most notably tight integration with its editor and platform.

throwawayjava 9y ago

> We're aiming for all the advantages of static typing, coupled with all the advantages of dynamic typing. For example, you use the same types all the way from DB schemas to API validation. Sounds like what Microsoft tried to do with the .NET ecosystem, but with cloud integration (which Microsoft should be doing for their own cloud) and API validation. Someone needs to actually succeed at doing this. Most of the type-checking/inference problems in this domain are decidable -- it's really a tooling/tooling integration problem. Creating a single unified tool instead of having developers clobber together libraries (JSON schema validator, ORM, MVC framework, deployment workflow for all of that, etc.) would be a huge value-add. Suggestion: code example/screenshot/workflow video on your homepage, and a link to your homepage in the advert. Nearly every programming language/library out there has a concise "hello, world" example on their homepage. Nearly every software development tool has a screenshot of sorts on their homepage. Those examples are worth a million words. Even an appropriately caveated "Wizard of Oz" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment) demo would go a long way.

pbiggar 9y ago
Thanks! If you have any things you think we should read, would love to see it. Internally, we build a Real World app (https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld) and some other stuff. It taught us a lot but not nearly as much as a real developer will :)

projectramo 9y ago

Thanks for clarifying. Can you share what language darklang uses (or what language it is based off of)? I imagine if it is a language the startup already uses, it would lower the risk of trying it.

pbiggar 9y ago
TBH, we took inspiration from a ton of different places, including a lot from Clojure, Python, Elm and Rust, as well as Rails and Django. Dark is probably closest to an ML (like OCaml/ReasonML or Elm), with some interesting twists that we think will greatly increase productivity and decrease complexity, most notably tight integration with its editor and platform.