3 ms·

There’s an important distinction between how non-unison code is stored (literally as plain text files which must be re-parsed and re-compiled every time) vs how

There’s an important distinction between how non-unison code is stored (literally as plain text files which must be re-parsed and re-compiled every time) vs how unison code is stored (as a post-parsing data structure). The file system is in an entirely different and irrelevant layer of abstraction.

turtletontine 5y ago
I'm not totally sure what the important distinction is here. For many languages the important thing is already a post-parsing data structure, that's what any compilation output or byte code is. You obviously want to keep the raw source around as well if you're the developer. Nothing new about having separate source code and compiled formats?
- turtletontine 5y ago
  Update: I'm skimming here (https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/whats-cool-about-unison/ https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/whats-cool-about-unison/) and here (https://joshondesign.com/2012/04/09/open-letter-language-designers https://joshondesign.com/2012/04/09/open-letter-language-des...) and I see Unison is serious about not having raw text source code as the ground truth. I'm intrigued but don't totally understand yet. I'm sure this analogy is technically incorrect but: This reminds me of Smalltalk and old Lisps on mainframes shared by many researchers where the main thing was the VM image, not an object file. Though the probably kept the source code around? At a gut level getting rid of source code makes me uncomfortable but I'm ready to learn more. PS sorry for the ugly raw links I'm on my phone
  - jack_h 5y ago
    Perhaps see my reply here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27654225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27654225). I think you may be misunderstanding what is being stored here. Now as a caveat I'm not familiar with this language, but I am familiar with the concept as described. They are not removing source code, rather source code is stored after some processing; in this case it appears to be after lexing, parsing, and type checking. I'm not sure exactly what is being stored, i.e. an AST, but it sounds like they're basically moving this stage of compilation/interpretation to be much earlier in the process. I'm assuming this database can be queried and the result can be rendered back to a textual presentation as well. Presumably this opens the door for syntax being divorced from language semantics since how the syntax is parsed into the database and how the database is rendered into text can be a client side decision rather than set in stone inside the compiler/interpreter. What is set in stone is the semantics of the database that everyone must agree to. Again, there's the caveat that I'm not familiar with how this language in particular is implementing this concept.

turtletontine 5y ago

I'm not totally sure what the important distinction is here. For many languages the important thing is already a post-parsing data structure, that's what any compilation output or byte code is. You obviously want to keep the raw source around as well if you're the developer. Nothing new about having separate source code and compiled formats?

turtletontine 5y ago
Update: I'm skimming here (https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/whats-cool-about-unison/ https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/whats-cool-about-unison/) and here (https://joshondesign.com/2012/04/09/open-letter-language-designers https://joshondesign.com/2012/04/09/open-letter-language-des...) and I see Unison is serious about not having raw text source code as the ground truth. I'm intrigued but don't totally understand yet. I'm sure this analogy is technically incorrect but: This reminds me of Smalltalk and old Lisps on mainframes shared by many researchers where the main thing was the VM image, not an object file. Though the probably kept the source code around? At a gut level getting rid of source code makes me uncomfortable but I'm ready to learn more. PS sorry for the ugly raw links I'm on my phone
- jack_h 5y ago
  Perhaps see my reply here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27654225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27654225). I think you may be misunderstanding what is being stored here. Now as a caveat I'm not familiar with this language, but I am familiar with the concept as described. They are not removing source code, rather source code is stored after some processing; in this case it appears to be after lexing, parsing, and type checking. I'm not sure exactly what is being stored, i.e. an AST, but it sounds like they're basically moving this stage of compilation/interpretation to be much earlier in the process. I'm assuming this database can be queried and the result can be rendered back to a textual presentation as well. Presumably this opens the door for syntax being divorced from language semantics since how the syntax is parsed into the database and how the database is rendered into text can be a client side decision rather than set in stone inside the compiler/interpreter. What is set in stone is the semantics of the database that everyone must agree to. Again, there's the caveat that I'm not familiar with how this language in particular is implementing this concept.