6 ms·

Graham cares about having a better programming language, but he doesn't really care enough to do what it takes to make it happen. (He has no obligation to do so

by SiVal 16y ago

Graham cares about having a better programming language, but he doesn't really care enough to do what it takes to make it happen. (He has no obligation to do so, of course.) Practical programming languages these days aren't just ways of expressing "algorithms," but toolkits for marshalling the vast information processing resources around the world (people, libraries, net protocols, platforms from microcontroller to supercluster, communications systems, etc.) The number of issues is enormous and growing. Useful programming languages have to have a whole army of specialists who provide feedback and code dealing with security, internationalization, performance, accessibility, net protocols, commercial-grade GUI wrapper/frameworks, installers, compilers/runtimes for countless platforms, scientific computing, embedded/realtime computing, frameworks of all sorts, dev tools.... Many of these things will be done poorly, if at all, if not accounted for in the design of the foundations of the language. That's the reason for the serious warts on all popular languages and the desire of many for something better designed. Yet Graham's approach is, as always, to work privately, get feedback from the same half-dozen friends, then make announcements on a "when we have something to announce, I'll announce it, so don't bother asking" schedule. If none of his friends knows enough about international coding issues, for example, to even realize how little they know about text (something more important to Lisp than to most languages), then he'll make a silly architectural decision regarding Unicode, which he'll announce to, not discuss with, the rest of the world. Hey, if my friends don't seem concerned by it, it can't be very important, right? This is too bad. Few languages have the potential Lisp has for creating flexible, evolvable code that can rapidly adapt to the changing world. Yes, I do think that the language matters, but it's the whole platform, not just the syntax. But I don't think you can create a successful, practical, general purpose language these days without an army of specialist volunteers behind you. Graham's message to specialist volunteers is "go away, you're not the people whose opinions I care about," so I think the language WILL last 100 years--in approximately its current form.

rms 16y ago
http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html
- nadam 16y ago
  As much as I like pg's essays generally I don't particularly like his essays on hardcore programming topics like language design. Maybe it is because I am inexperienced in most of the topics he discusses in his essays but I am quite experienced in programming. Some reactions to the essay: "I predict a similar fate for Java" It is ridiculous that pg once said he does not know Java at all. Yet he expresses his opinions about it. How can I take his opinion seriously as someone who knows almost the whole language specification of Java by head and had been programming in Java for at least 9 years? It is not only knowing the language which is important. But knowing all those problem patterns that have to be solved at typical enterprise projects. These projects are inherently complicated and has a lot to do with databases (and less with expressing nice and elegant algorithms). Java is not a particularly good language, but without developing a lot for in enterprise projects you really don't know what is needed by those projects. That said my favourite language is Scala. It ihas all the advantages of Java and the Java platform but it is a much better language than Java. It is not a 'pure' language. Pure languages never really do well for widespread practical use. "I think it's important not just that the axioms be well chosen, but that there be few of them. Mathematicians have always felt this way about axioms-- the fewer, the better-- and I think they're onto something." First the core language in mathematics (the language of first order logic) is orthogonal to axioms. You can have a language with simple syntax (some math books define such a minimalistic language for first order logic), but it will not be good for practical use and will not be concise. So for practical use and for conciseness mathematicians have introduced plently of notations. (e.g. typographical conventions for differentiation, integration, infix syntax for addition, multiplication, etc...), etc. The real-world language that mathematicians use day-to-day is more like let's say Scala than a very pure language. Axioms (and theorems derived from them) are more like libraries. There are plenty of axiom systems: (separate for numbers, geomerty, etc...) The whole mathematics is something like the Java ecosystem: lots of libraries. What pg speaks about is some kind of utopia. A world where all programmers have to do is to express elegant algorithms. But programmers have to solve complex problems which mostly don't have an elegant solution at all. 100 years later we will still not have incredibly elegant solutions for our then hard problems. Even mathematicians don't always have elegant minimalistic solutions for their problems. Andrew Wiles worked for 10 years to prove his theorem. The proof is the result of lots of work and knowledge, and is incredibly complex. It does not fit on the margin at all. Just look at natural languages: they are incredibly useful and concise in some sense, but they are incredibly complex. Programming languages will never be so complex, but they will not necessarily be extremely simple either. Edit: I love minimalism, and I hate convoluted overcomplicated libraries and code bases, and I hate very leaky abstractions. The smaller the code base is the better: this is my main philosophy. But I still think that pg goes too far with his utopia for simplicity. I think that simplicity and conciseness of application code requires some complexity and intricacy on the core language and libraries side.
elblanco 16y ago
I've always had the impression that pg works on Arc as a hobby, a service to himself. If it's useful to other people, that's fantastic, but that's not why he's doing it. It's like writing music for yourself. Of course you want to share it, it people like it and it's meaningful to them, you've done a good deed for the day, but otherwise it's done just to help stoke the fires within. (pg correct me if I'm wrong)
- SiVal 16y ago
  That is how he seems to work on it, but he talked as if it were so much more. Well, lots of us do that, and I'm not expressing any moral objection. Graham doesn't owe us anything. I'm making the practical observation that I don't think it can ever be a major language if developed this way. Graham has spent nearly a decade now tinkering with syntax. I think he'd say that he's trying to get the foundation correct, and all the rest can come after that. But I'm saying that, as much as I like his syntax ideas, there is more to the foundation than syntax, that the other issues will inevitably have implications for the basic design, even for the syntax, that his half-dozen friends don't know enough to fully inform him of the state of the art in these issues, and that his lack of interest in enlisting the help of the rest of the world in the foundational issues is likely to render the Arc Project a mere exploration of syntactic tweaks to Lisp, not a major new language.
NickPollard 16y ago
You don't need huge libraries and labyrinthine frameworks to be a 'useful' language. C is a perfectly good language with just the most basic standard library.
- cturner 16y ago
  C does get the OS API, though. Is it easy and non-kludgy to make unix system calls from arc?
- jbarham 16y ago
  > C is a perfectly good language with just the most basic standard library. Unless you want to write cross-platform networking code. But in that case C is an excellent language for writing networking libraries for your favorite scripting languages. I'd argue that nowadays C is used more to implement other languages than it is by itself.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    That's probably been true for a long time. That and low-level libraries. Even the really old Unix books recommend piping together small C utilities and stuff written in awk, sh, etc.
pg 16y ago
My goal from the beginning was to continue where JMC left off: to continue building Lisp up from axioms till I have a more complete language. I've compromised a bit to make it something runnable, which I think you need in order to test out your ideas on programs of substantial length. But "practical programming" is not in itself the main goal. Paradoxical as it sounds, that may be the way to end up with the best language for practical programming. It worked for McCarthy, and I think there's more juice yet to be squeezed out of this orange.
- hasenj 16y ago
  Wasn't McCarthy working on a model that's more elegant than Turing machines? As far as axioms go, you can't get simpler than the Turing machine: it doesn't even have a notion of a variable, let alone types or strings. I don't know about the history of Lisp other from what I've read from you, but it seems what McCarthy was working on was a more elegant model, rather than an "axiomatically pure" model. Arc on the other hand, is trying to compete with Ruby and Python.
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    Lambda calculus is actually simpler than Turing machines. There are only two primitives: function definition and application. You can use that to express any computable function, including booleans, conditionals, integers, arithmetic, strings, etc.
  - pg 16y ago
    I believe his goal was a formal model of computation that was also good for expressing algorithms. Plus eval probably seemed like a neat trick. We take it for granted, but imagine how pleasing that must have been to think of. I'm not trying to compete with Ruby and Python. If I were I'd be recruiting armies of people to write libraries.
    - hasenj 16y ago
      I meant "compete" in terms of expressiveness. And actually that's not the only thing. A language that can express algorithms in few lines that are very cryptic (read: hard to read) is not very useful. I think were python hit the mark spot on is the adoption of the idea that "programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute". And where ruby hit it spot on is "optimizing for happiness", I particularly like Matz's his idea about "harmony"[1]. Matz> I believe consistency and orthogonality are tools of design, not the primary goal in design. If the language forces you to carry the compiler in your brain as you try to read code, it's a bad idea. One of the things that annoy me about lisp as a beginner, and maybe this only because I'm a beginner, is that I always have to manually compile code into the syntax tree. [1]: http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby2.html http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby2.html

by SiVal 16y ago

rms 16y ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

nadam 16y ago
As much as I like pg's essays generally I don't particularly like his essays on hardcore programming topics like language design. Maybe it is because I am inexperienced in most of the topics he discusses in his essays but I am quite experienced in programming. Some reactions to the essay: "I predict a similar fate for Java" It is ridiculous that pg once said he does not know Java at all. Yet he expresses his opinions about it. How can I take his opinion seriously as someone who knows almost the whole language specification of Java by head and had been programming in Java for at least 9 years? It is not only knowing the language which is important. But knowing all those problem patterns that have to be solved at typical enterprise projects. These projects are inherently complicated and has a lot to do with databases (and less with expressing nice and elegant algorithms). Java is not a particularly good language, but without developing a lot for in enterprise projects you really don't know what is needed by those projects. That said my favourite language is Scala. It ihas all the advantages of Java and the Java platform but it is a much better language than Java. It is not a 'pure' language. Pure languages never really do well for widespread practical use. "I think it's important not just that the axioms be well chosen, but that there be few of them. Mathematicians have always felt this way about axioms-- the fewer, the better-- and I think they're onto something." First the core language in mathematics (the language of first order logic) is orthogonal to axioms. You can have a language with simple syntax (some math books define such a minimalistic language for first order logic), but it will not be good for practical use and will not be concise. So for practical use and for conciseness mathematicians have introduced plently of notations. (e.g. typographical conventions for differentiation, integration, infix syntax for addition, multiplication, etc...), etc. The real-world language that mathematicians use day-to-day is more like let's say Scala than a very pure language. Axioms (and theorems derived from them) are more like libraries. There are plenty of axiom systems: (separate for numbers, geomerty, etc...) The whole mathematics is something like the Java ecosystem: lots of libraries. What pg speaks about is some kind of utopia. A world where all programmers have to do is to express elegant algorithms. But programmers have to solve complex problems which mostly don't have an elegant solution at all. 100 years later we will still not have incredibly elegant solutions for our then hard problems. Even mathematicians don't always have elegant minimalistic solutions for their problems. Andrew Wiles worked for 10 years to prove his theorem. The proof is the result of lots of work and knowledge, and is incredibly complex. It does not fit on the margin at all. Just look at natural languages: they are incredibly useful and concise in some sense, but they are incredibly complex. Programming languages will never be so complex, but they will not necessarily be extremely simple either. Edit: I love minimalism, and I hate convoluted overcomplicated libraries and code bases, and I hate very leaky abstractions. The smaller the code base is the better: this is my main philosophy. But I still think that pg goes too far with his utopia for simplicity. I think that simplicity and conciseness of application code requires some complexity and intricacy on the core language and libraries side.

elblanco 16y ago

I've always had the impression that pg works on Arc as a hobby, a service to himself. If it's useful to other people, that's fantastic, but that's not why he's doing it. It's like writing music for yourself. Of course you want to share it, it people like it and it's meaningful to them, you've done a good deed for the day, but otherwise it's done just to help stoke the fires within. (pg correct me if I'm wrong)

SiVal 16y ago
That is how he seems to work on it, but he talked as if it were so much more. Well, lots of us do that, and I'm not expressing any moral objection. Graham doesn't owe us anything. I'm making the practical observation that I don't think it can ever be a major language if developed this way. Graham has spent nearly a decade now tinkering with syntax. I think he'd say that he's trying to get the foundation correct, and all the rest can come after that. But I'm saying that, as much as I like his syntax ideas, there is more to the foundation than syntax, that the other issues will inevitably have implications for the basic design, even for the syntax, that his half-dozen friends don't know enough to fully inform him of the state of the art in these issues, and that his lack of interest in enlisting the help of the rest of the world in the foundational issues is likely to render the Arc Project a mere exploration of syntactic tweaks to Lisp, not a major new language.

NickPollard 16y ago

You don't need huge libraries and labyrinthine frameworks to be a 'useful' language. C is a perfectly good language with just the most basic standard library.

cturner 16y ago
C does get the OS API, though. Is it easy and non-kludgy to make unix system calls from arc?
jbarham 16y ago
> C is a perfectly good language with just the most basic standard library. Unless you want to write cross-platform networking code. But in that case C is an excellent language for writing networking libraries for your favorite scripting languages. I'd argue that nowadays C is used more to implement other languages than it is by itself.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  That's probably been true for a long time. That and low-level libraries. Even the really old Unix books recommend piping together small C utilities and stuff written in awk, sh, etc.

pg 16y ago

My goal from the beginning was to continue where JMC left off: to continue building Lisp up from axioms till I have a more complete language. I've compromised a bit to make it something runnable, which I think you need in order to test out your ideas on programs of substantial length. But "practical programming" is not in itself the main goal. Paradoxical as it sounds, that may be the way to end up with the best language for practical programming. It worked for McCarthy, and I think there's more juice yet to be squeezed out of this orange.

hasenj 16y ago
Wasn't McCarthy working on a model that's more elegant than Turing machines? As far as axioms go, you can't get simpler than the Turing machine: it doesn't even have a notion of a variable, let alone types or strings. I don't know about the history of Lisp other from what I've read from you, but it seems what McCarthy was working on was a more elegant model, rather than an "axiomatically pure" model. Arc on the other hand, is trying to compete with Ruby and Python.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  Lambda calculus is actually simpler than Turing machines. There are only two primitives: function definition and application. You can use that to express any computable function, including booleans, conditionals, integers, arithmetic, strings, etc.
- pg 16y ago
  I believe his goal was a formal model of computation that was also good for expressing algorithms. Plus eval probably seemed like a neat trick. We take it for granted, but imagine how pleasing that must have been to think of. I'm not trying to compete with Ruby and Python. If I were I'd be recruiting armies of people to write libraries.
  - hasenj 16y ago
    I meant "compete" in terms of expressiveness. And actually that's not the only thing. A language that can express algorithms in few lines that are very cryptic (read: hard to read) is not very useful. I think were python hit the mark spot on is the adoption of the idea that "programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute". And where ruby hit it spot on is "optimizing for happiness", I particularly like Matz's his idea about "harmony"[1]. Matz> I believe consistency and orthogonality are tools of design, not the primary goal in design. If the language forces you to carry the compiler in your brain as you try to read code, it's a bad idea. One of the things that annoy me about lisp as a beginner, and maybe this only because I'm a beginner, is that I always have to manually compile code into the syntax tree. [1]: http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby2.html http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby2.html