4 ms·

Beads is like VB6, and Oracle Delphi, an all-in-one language that shields you from the complexities of learning all these external tools and having to learn so

Beads is like VB6, and Oracle Delphi, an all-in-one language that shields you from the complexities of learning all these external tools and having to learn so many languages. To someone whom i guess a long-time developer, you might dismiss it as too simplistic for your purposes. For example you can skip using Unix Bash and use Beads like Python as a scripting language. You can build a very nice client/server product like the "Robin Hoody" app, using the publish/subscribe functions built into the language without ever learning how to encode/decode a packet, as the runtime makes it easy to do this. So in that sense the language does offer a virtual transport layer. Sure, you may need to drop down and encode/decode a websocket message buffer, but the point of Beads is to permit writing in a single language, without having to learn CSS and the whole pile of complexity that accompanies modern development. You can't make an easier stock quoting system (one of the examples), because it has been reduced to the absolute minimum number of lines. The protected arithmetic of Excel is of proven utility, and i am merely imitating it. I replace #UNDEF with U, and #ERROR with ERR to make it less verbose, but protections abound in Beads both at compile time, and at runtime. In a graph database universe, you don't need scalars, tuples, lists, dictionaries, queues, hashmaps, etc., because a single more general data structure accomplishes that you need. Graph databases are quite hot; Neo4J has grown leaps and bounds, and Oracle was forced to come out with one. I am sure that most existing systems continue to use older tech, because that is always how it goes in computers. People are still running COBOL in some places, because it is so damn fast and works perfectly at what it was built to do. I have no doubt that we will see existing tech which works fine continue to be used for another 50 years. It makes sense to make an easier environment that is still capable, but much simpler to learn and use, and that is the goal of Beads. As for the skepticism of crowds, my product is out there, and has no major bugs in it, and hopefully will find an audience that likes this approach.

bawolff 5y ago
No offense, but that's the most BS sounding pitch i've ever heard. You're fixing the garbage-in, garbage-out problem? Have you also invented strong AI and solved the halting problem? Edit: you should replace your website with the first page of your language reference pdf. That's a better pitch and more interesting than anything you've written here.
ska 5y ago
"Graph databases are considered more powerful and modern than relational databases" vs. "Graph databases are quite hot" These two statements are in no way equivalent. I see what GP was complaining about. Even your opening para graph contains a fair bit of confusion. It reads like you are suggesting imperative languages were succeeded by object oriented, which were succeeded by functional in 'generations' - which is already incorrect on a couple of fundamental levels - and now the time is "ripe" for a "new paradigm" called declarative. Which is a language classification that has been around since nearly the beginning (first thing it makes me think of is Prolog, e.g. 1970s). So is this new or old? This followed by a couple of pretty silly sounding assertions "almost no bugs" "10:1 reduction in life-cycle costs" which unsurprisingly are not supported. Then we have the last sentence "For many graphical interactive or client/server applications, you can replace the entire development stack with one relatively simple tool.". Isn't that what you really want to convey? When you get off on the wrong foot like that it's not hard to see why you've had some of the responses you have had. If you replaced the entire first paragraph with that last sentence you'd be far better off; the rest is poor communication, just getting in your own way.
- magicmouse 5y ago
  okay i have rewritten parts of it. I hope you folks take it for a spin; it has a lot of nice touches in it; worked very hard on the balance between concision and readability.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I was amused to see you trash-talking COBOL on your blog, because the language snippets I've seen read a bit like COBOL.
    - magicmouse 5y ago
      I don't see similarities with COBOL other than Beads has a low percentage of punctuation, but that is from imitating Python's indent-significant code structure style. COBOL generated a lot of billable hours. I did early years in my career as a consultant-for-hire in a SF body shop, and occasionally would have to fix some COBOL thing. I sure hated it. Woke up one day in a puddle of drool from passing out because of boredom, and then switched jobs. Beads is from a word-count metric, is probably within 20% of the minimum word count for the sample programs i presented, if you exclude techniques that greatly obfuscate the logic such as those used in Oscar Toledo's famous chess program. Substitution and concatenative languages like FORTH regularly win code-length contests, but they aren't very readable. Beads tries to find a happy medium between brevity and clarity. I think people writing it will enjoy the careful balance that was struck.
jasonshaev 5y ago
How you present your ideas are as important as the quality of your ideas. My suggestion is that your website's presentation does not present your ideas in a way that is likely to reach your target audience. That's an opinion of course. Your comment clarifies that you aren't claiming to replace UNIX but that you can use Beads as a general scripting language. Consider updating the big graphic on the front page that says UNIX to Say Bash (sh, zsh or whatever). Lastly, your response is selling me on graph databases, but I never objected to graph databases as a technology, just your bold statement about them with no caveats or citations. Saying, "graph databases are considered more powerful and modern than relational databases..." is a good way to start a flame war but not a good way to convince someone to use your product. All that being said, best of luck with your project! I do mean that sincerely.

bawolff 5y ago

No offense, but that's the most BS sounding pitch i've ever heard. You're fixing the garbage-in, garbage-out problem? Have you also invented strong AI and solved the halting problem? Edit: you should replace your website with the first page of your language reference pdf. That's a better pitch and more interesting than anything you've written here.

ska 5y ago

"Graph databases are considered more powerful and modern than relational databases" vs. "Graph databases are quite hot" These two statements are in no way equivalent. I see what GP was complaining about. Even your opening para graph contains a fair bit of confusion. It reads like you are suggesting imperative languages were succeeded by object oriented, which were succeeded by functional in 'generations' - which is already incorrect on a couple of fundamental levels - and now the time is "ripe" for a "new paradigm" called declarative. Which is a language classification that has been around since nearly the beginning (first thing it makes me think of is Prolog, e.g. 1970s). So is this new or old? This followed by a couple of pretty silly sounding assertions "almost no bugs" "10:1 reduction in life-cycle costs" which unsurprisingly are not supported. Then we have the last sentence "For many graphical interactive or client/server applications, you can replace the entire development stack with one relatively simple tool.". Isn't that what you really want to convey? When you get off on the wrong foot like that it's not hard to see why you've had some of the responses you have had. If you replaced the entire first paragraph with that last sentence you'd be far better off; the rest is poor communication, just getting in your own way.

magicmouse 5y ago
okay i have rewritten parts of it. I hope you folks take it for a spin; it has a lot of nice touches in it; worked very hard on the balance between concision and readability.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I was amused to see you trash-talking COBOL on your blog, because the language snippets I've seen read a bit like COBOL.
  - magicmouse 5y ago
    I don't see similarities with COBOL other than Beads has a low percentage of punctuation, but that is from imitating Python's indent-significant code structure style. COBOL generated a lot of billable hours. I did early years in my career as a consultant-for-hire in a SF body shop, and occasionally would have to fix some COBOL thing. I sure hated it. Woke up one day in a puddle of drool from passing out because of boredom, and then switched jobs. Beads is from a word-count metric, is probably within 20% of the minimum word count for the sample programs i presented, if you exclude techniques that greatly obfuscate the logic such as those used in Oscar Toledo's famous chess program. Substitution and concatenative languages like FORTH regularly win code-length contests, but they aren't very readable. Beads tries to find a happy medium between brevity and clarity. I think people writing it will enjoy the careful balance that was struck.

jasonshaev 5y ago

How you present your ideas are as important as the quality of your ideas. My suggestion is that your website's presentation does not present your ideas in a way that is likely to reach your target audience. That's an opinion of course. Your comment clarifies that you aren't claiming to replace UNIX but that you can use Beads as a general scripting language. Consider updating the big graphic on the front page that says UNIX to Say Bash (sh, zsh or whatever). Lastly, your response is selling me on graph databases, but I never objected to graph databases as a technology, just your bold statement about them with no caveats or citations. Saying, "graph databases are considered more powerful and modern than relational databases..." is a good way to start a flame war but not a good way to convince someone to use your product. All that being said, best of luck with your project! I do mean that sincerely.