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I have done big and small python/C/C++ projects. For python small projects it is pretty sweet. You type some commands and you are up and running. With c/c++

I have done big and small python/C/C++ projects. For python small projects it is pretty sweet. You type some commands and you are up and running. With c/c++ it seems there is always this 'big' first time step for setup. Yet long term that seems to flip around like you have seen. Where that first time setup works pretty good for a long time. Whereas in python the org of the program becomes this dead weight you are kind of fighting. It is not awful but just kind of there. Now that is just my exp I am sure others had the opposite. But it is nice to see someone else out there thinking like I do about this. python for nice small contained things. other languages for longer term bigger projects. But it is same problem most of the time you have in many orgs. The prototype becomes the production thing :( People always ask me 'how do I become a programmer' the first thing I always tell them is 'you need to learn python it is fairly easy to pick up and learn' I aim them at the python org website and their excellent tutorials. Funny enough it weeds out the people who do not really want to be a programmer but thought it sounded cool, as they have to stop and learn something.

iainctduncan 6y ago
Yeah, I hear you. Nowadays I do Scheme embedded in C/C++. The stuff I used to love Python for is now done in Scheme, and the outer containers are in C++. It's actually a really nice way to write code, for me at least. Forces a clean architecture on you, and you know you can always move anything out into C++ if you need either a library or lower-level access. I use S7, but you could use Guile, Gambit, Chicken similarly.
- 323454 6y ago
  This is an interesting architecture, can you provide some more details on how exactly that works? E.g. do you use a c++ library that interprets scheme?
  - iainctduncan 6y ago
    yeah, I use S7 Scheme. It's a complete scheme interpreter in one C file, super easy to embed, quite similar to Clojure linguistically. Basically all "business" logic is in Scheme, all OS/UI interaction is in C or C++. For me, it's amazing, because I write music apps and I can reuse my model code across desktop, phone, in Max/MSP or PureData, in web assembly, everywhere. Being able to prototype in Max is awesome. My model layer only knows about music, the high-level user actions (ie "play note", not "click button"), and Scheme. It doesn't know anything about widgets, phones, etc. All boundaries are crossed with the C FFI layer (which is really nice in S7) forcing a strict ports-and-adapters approach. There absolutely is upfront cost, but the liberation of being totally decoupled from any framework or vendor in my model code is awesome. I chose S7 because I'm doing music, but you could do similar with Guile, Chicken, Gambit, Embedded Common Lisp, etc. And Scheme is so minimal that if I needed to switch Scheme implementations it would not be a big deal - I would only be rewriting the adapter layer. Interesting, one of the most successful companies I've seen in my tech due diligence work was doing the same thing in high end scientific computing. They had written their own DSL, and a whole containing application layer in C that could run on any target platform, with GUI adapters for windows, unix, osx, etc. They were doing very well. And they could get amazing scientists to work for them super-productively because the DSL was designed around the scientists needs.
    - tijsvd 6y ago
      Interesting. This actually sounds very similar to game developers embedding Lua or V8 for various logic. I've used Lua myself in a similar way, embedded in a high perf application, with a user script driving the logic.
      - iainctduncan 6y ago
        Yeah Naughty Dog was doing the same thing in Scheme apparently!
    - tlavoie 6y ago
      This sounds awesome, glad to hear it's working well for you. One question that comes to mind for the business stuff is security. Basically, are you accepting Scheme code from untrusted users, or is it just a bundled part of the app? The reason I'm asking is that that run-time flexibility can completely bite you in the ass if someone can submit code that does unacceptable, unanticipated things. For example, I had an engagement with a company to review their main application, that they host. The issue was that while the app was in Java, it accepted user templates in (IIRC) BeanShell. One quick System.exit() in a template as a proof of concept, and Tomcat came thundering down. The concept still works of course if you restrict the language accepted to some minimal DSL.

iainctduncan 6y ago

Yeah, I hear you. Nowadays I do Scheme embedded in C/C++. The stuff I used to love Python for is now done in Scheme, and the outer containers are in C++. It's actually a really nice way to write code, for me at least. Forces a clean architecture on you, and you know you can always move anything out into C++ if you need either a library or lower-level access. I use S7, but you could use Guile, Gambit, Chicken similarly.

323454 6y ago
This is an interesting architecture, can you provide some more details on how exactly that works? E.g. do you use a c++ library that interprets scheme?
- iainctduncan 6y ago
  yeah, I use S7 Scheme. It's a complete scheme interpreter in one C file, super easy to embed, quite similar to Clojure linguistically. Basically all "business" logic is in Scheme, all OS/UI interaction is in C or C++. For me, it's amazing, because I write music apps and I can reuse my model code across desktop, phone, in Max/MSP or PureData, in web assembly, everywhere. Being able to prototype in Max is awesome. My model layer only knows about music, the high-level user actions (ie "play note", not "click button"), and Scheme. It doesn't know anything about widgets, phones, etc. All boundaries are crossed with the C FFI layer (which is really nice in S7) forcing a strict ports-and-adapters approach. There absolutely is upfront cost, but the liberation of being totally decoupled from any framework or vendor in my model code is awesome. I chose S7 because I'm doing music, but you could do similar with Guile, Chicken, Gambit, Embedded Common Lisp, etc. And Scheme is so minimal that if I needed to switch Scheme implementations it would not be a big deal - I would only be rewriting the adapter layer. Interesting, one of the most successful companies I've seen in my tech due diligence work was doing the same thing in high end scientific computing. They had written their own DSL, and a whole containing application layer in C that could run on any target platform, with GUI adapters for windows, unix, osx, etc. They were doing very well. And they could get amazing scientists to work for them super-productively because the DSL was designed around the scientists needs.
  - tijsvd 6y ago
    Interesting. This actually sounds very similar to game developers embedding Lua or V8 for various logic. I've used Lua myself in a similar way, embedded in a high perf application, with a user script driving the logic.
    - iainctduncan 6y ago
      Yeah Naughty Dog was doing the same thing in Scheme apparently!
  - tlavoie 6y ago
    This sounds awesome, glad to hear it's working well for you. One question that comes to mind for the business stuff is security. Basically, are you accepting Scheme code from untrusted users, or is it just a bundled part of the app? The reason I'm asking is that that run-time flexibility can completely bite you in the ass if someone can submit code that does unacceptable, unanticipated things. For example, I had an engagement with a company to review their main application, that they host. The issue was that while the app was in Java, it accepted user templates in (IIRC) BeanShell. One quick System.exit() in a template as a proof of concept, and Tomcat came thundering down. The concept still works of course if you restrict the language accepted to some minimal DSL.