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From a PL design perspective, I'm interested in finding out what new ideas it introduces to an already crowded field? Rust is good example of a PL design that

From a PL design perspective, I'm interested in finding out what new ideas it introduces to an already crowded field? Rust is good example of a PL design that introduces new concepts (around ownership.) Pony is another good example of PL design, for the same reason as Rust, but it differs in important ways by introducing Reference Capabilities. I tried to get some attention to it the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201754 What new ideas does Elena introduce?

mcintyre1994 6y ago
I heard a good podcast about pony recently: https://corecursive.com/055-unproven-with-sean-allen-1/ https://corecursive.com/055-unproven-with-sean-allen-1/ - it’s about how Wallaroo Labs came to use it. They talk about using it to deal with some really interesting engineering challenges. One of the things that I found interesting is their comparison to Rust was that at least at the time Rust didn’t have a comparable runtime to Pony’s high performance actor based one.
- whynotwhynot 6y ago
  "Sean: There was one issue and that was when somebody went to upgrade something and didn’t follow the upgrade instructions. But for the stuff that we built, that was processed at the peak, about 80 million calculations second handling hundreds of thousands of incoming requests a second with packed full of data, which would blow up into like 80 million calculations a second run in for a year. Not one teeny tiny little issue that to me that’s beautiful. That’s beauty to me. Right?" Sounds poetic enough to me to get into!
- brabel 6y ago
  It's a shame Pony does not get enough attention as it's a very nice language that as you say, introduces truly innovative ideas. I wrote some code in it and it was extremely fast, in the same order of magnitude as Rust/C. But it was quite complex to write, unfortunately, compared to the Rust version (which also guarantees no deadlocks and safe concurrency). On the other hand, the code looked quite a lot prettier due to its Python-like syntax. Anyway, it's one of those tools I keep in the shed, hoping to one day find a good use for it... just hope it continues evolving (specially running Actors on multiple machines would be a real killer feature - making Pony like a typed Erlang with beautiful syntax).
  - mcintyre1994 6y ago
    I'd like to find an excuse to use it for something just to try it out at some point! Being able to run it distributed like Erlang would be really cool, interesting idea :)
  - anentropic 6y ago
    Any language with an explicit `end` keyword can't claim beautiful Python-like syntax :P Pony is still pretty cool though
traes 6y ago
Just so you know, it appears you've been shadow banned. No idea why. I would suggest joining lobste.rs, an HN clone built out of frustration of HN's lack of transparency on banning.
- anonymoushn 6y ago
  It appears that the procedure to sign up is to go to IRC and ask for an invite.
  - speps 6y ago
    The point is also to vouch for someone when an invite is sent. At least in my mind, as in it's officially done, if the invitee misbehaves, it's kind of the responsibility of the inviter. Every profile has who invited who.
    - zelphirkalt 6y ago
      Then how does the inviter know, that they can vouch for the invitee? Perhaps no one there knows me. Why would anyone vouch for someone they don't know? Wouldn't that make vouching a useless hurdle?
      - rlwinm 6y ago
        > Then how does the inviter know, that they can vouch for the invitee? AFAIK you aren't accountable for your invitees on a day-to-day basis. It just reflects poorly on you if you invite many poorly behaved people - this isn't substantially different from everyday life. > Perhaps no one there knows me. Why would anyone vouch for someone they don't know? Some people do invite everyone who asks. They can have their invite rights disabled or in extreme cases be banned from the site. This is relatively rare. You can see examples of this at https://lobste.rs/moderations?moderator=%28All%29&what%5Busers%5D=users https://lobste.rs/moderations?moderator=%28All%29&what%5Buse.... > Wouldn't that make vouching a useless hurdle? Lobste.rs has a small audience and 3 moderators. The moderation is also much more active than HN - moderators will send private warnings, delete off-topic posts, etc. Moderator actions are publicly visible at https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations. Vouching raises the barrier to entry and allows the moderators to keep up with the workload.

mcintyre1994 6y ago

I heard a good podcast about pony recently: https://corecursive.com/055-unproven-with-sean-allen-1/ https://corecursive.com/055-unproven-with-sean-allen-1/ - it’s about how Wallaroo Labs came to use it. They talk about using it to deal with some really interesting engineering challenges. One of the things that I found interesting is their comparison to Rust was that at least at the time Rust didn’t have a comparable runtime to Pony’s high performance actor based one.

whynotwhynot 6y ago
"Sean: There was one issue and that was when somebody went to upgrade something and didn’t follow the upgrade instructions. But for the stuff that we built, that was processed at the peak, about 80 million calculations second handling hundreds of thousands of incoming requests a second with packed full of data, which would blow up into like 80 million calculations a second run in for a year. Not one teeny tiny little issue that to me that’s beautiful. That’s beauty to me. Right?" Sounds poetic enough to me to get into!
brabel 6y ago
It's a shame Pony does not get enough attention as it's a very nice language that as you say, introduces truly innovative ideas. I wrote some code in it and it was extremely fast, in the same order of magnitude as Rust/C. But it was quite complex to write, unfortunately, compared to the Rust version (which also guarantees no deadlocks and safe concurrency). On the other hand, the code looked quite a lot prettier due to its Python-like syntax. Anyway, it's one of those tools I keep in the shed, hoping to one day find a good use for it... just hope it continues evolving (specially running Actors on multiple machines would be a real killer feature - making Pony like a typed Erlang with beautiful syntax).
- mcintyre1994 6y ago
  I'd like to find an excuse to use it for something just to try it out at some point! Being able to run it distributed like Erlang would be really cool, interesting idea :)
- anentropic 6y ago
  Any language with an explicit `end` keyword can't claim beautiful Python-like syntax :P Pony is still pretty cool though

traes 6y ago

Just so you know, it appears you've been shadow banned. No idea why. I would suggest joining lobste.rs, an HN clone built out of frustration of HN's lack of transparency on banning.

anonymoushn 6y ago
It appears that the procedure to sign up is to go to IRC and ask for an invite.
- speps 6y ago
  The point is also to vouch for someone when an invite is sent. At least in my mind, as in it's officially done, if the invitee misbehaves, it's kind of the responsibility of the inviter. Every profile has who invited who.
  - zelphirkalt 6y ago
    Then how does the inviter know, that they can vouch for the invitee? Perhaps no one there knows me. Why would anyone vouch for someone they don't know? Wouldn't that make vouching a useless hurdle?
    - rlwinm 6y ago
      > Then how does the inviter know, that they can vouch for the invitee? AFAIK you aren't accountable for your invitees on a day-to-day basis. It just reflects poorly on you if you invite many poorly behaved people - this isn't substantially different from everyday life. > Perhaps no one there knows me. Why would anyone vouch for someone they don't know? Some people do invite everyone who asks. They can have their invite rights disabled or in extreme cases be banned from the site. This is relatively rare. You can see examples of this at https://lobste.rs/moderations?moderator=%28All%29&what%5Busers%5D=users https://lobste.rs/moderations?moderator=%28All%29&what%5Buse.... > Wouldn't that make vouching a useless hurdle? Lobste.rs has a small audience and 3 moderators. The moderation is also much more active than HN - moderators will send private warnings, delete off-topic posts, etc. Moderator actions are publicly visible at https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations. Vouching raises the barrier to entry and allows the moderators to keep up with the workload.