3 ms·

I never saw Pony described as high performance. Now I'm interested

spooneybarger 6y ago
The tag line that has carried over on all the website versions is: "Pony is an open-source, object-oriented, actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language"
ObscureScience 6y ago
That's how I always seen it described. Not high performance as in low level signal processing, but as in server software. I would think of it like an alternative to Go (and Erlang), but with more focus on performance, safety and more functional and ruby-like rather than C-like. What they are sacrificing is simplicity, and perhaps ease-of-reasoning.
rurban 6y ago
Well, in the very first benchmarks it was the fastest of all on multicore machines. Faster than C++ with pstl/openmp. Lockfree/non-blocking stdlib has its advantages. It's also safe, much safer than rust.
- ibraheemdev 6y ago
  > It's also safe, much safer than rust. Can you give an example of this? How is Pony "much" safer than Rust?
  - spooneybarger 6y ago
    As a member of the pony core team, I'm not comfortable saying Pony is safer than Rust. The approach of the two is different; each with their own trade-offs. Given how easy it is to use c-ffi from Pony, it can be hard with existing tooling to feel confident in what your Pony code might do. Once you call out via C-FFI, all safety guarantees are off. In this way, the c-ffi in Pony is as problematic for reasoning about safety as `unsafe` is in Rust. Pony allows you to turn off FFI for all packages except for some that you allow but even then, FFI is an end around for the memory safety and capabilities security that the language otherwise provides. Improving FFI tooling is an ongoing conversation amongst the core team.
    - ObscureScience 6y ago
      Is not the Pony c-ffi, while allowing theoretically the same unsafety, more uncontrolled than rust's "unsafe"? As in the latter case, as I have understood it, you get all the normal rust type checking, except for some pointer ownership exceptions. I have not explored either of the languages too the extent that I needed to use either.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  Not saying that Rust is fault-proof but that's a pretty bold claim. How do you back it?
mcguire 6y ago
Pony 1) isn't interpreted and 2) tries to avoid copying data between actors (think threads).

The tag line that has carried over on all the website versions is: "Pony is an open-source, object-oriented, actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language"

ObscureScience 6y ago

That's how I always seen it described. Not high performance as in low level signal processing, but as in server software. I would think of it like an alternative to Go (and Erlang), but with more focus on performance, safety and more functional and ruby-like rather than C-like. What they are sacrificing is simplicity, and perhaps ease-of-reasoning.

rurban 6y ago

Well, in the very first benchmarks it was the fastest of all on multicore machines. Faster than C++ with pstl/openmp. Lockfree/non-blocking stdlib has its advantages. It's also safe, much safer than rust.

ibraheemdev 6y ago
> It's also safe, much safer than rust. Can you give an example of this? How is Pony "much" safer than Rust?
- spooneybarger 6y ago
  As a member of the pony core team, I'm not comfortable saying Pony is safer than Rust. The approach of the two is different; each with their own trade-offs. Given how easy it is to use c-ffi from Pony, it can be hard with existing tooling to feel confident in what your Pony code might do. Once you call out via C-FFI, all safety guarantees are off. In this way, the c-ffi in Pony is as problematic for reasoning about safety as `unsafe` is in Rust. Pony allows you to turn off FFI for all packages except for some that you allow but even then, FFI is an end around for the memory safety and capabilities security that the language otherwise provides. Improving FFI tooling is an ongoing conversation amongst the core team.
  - ObscureScience 6y ago
    Is not the Pony c-ffi, while allowing theoretically the same unsafety, more uncontrolled than rust's "unsafe"? As in the latter case, as I have understood it, you get all the normal rust type checking, except for some pointer ownership exceptions. I have not explored either of the languages too the extent that I needed to use either.
pdimitar 6y ago
Not saying that Rust is fault-proof but that's a pretty bold claim. How do you back it?

mcguire 6y ago

Pony 1) isn't interpreted and 2) tries to avoid copying data between actors (think threads).