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If someone used Lisp, Elm, Rust, Elixir, Go, or even just JavaScript, they should know that these are SO vastly different in their mental models that "languages

by k__ 5y ago

If someone used Lisp, Elm, Rust, Elixir, Go, or even just JavaScript, they should know that these are SO vastly different in their mental models that "languages are solved" doesn't strike me as a reasonable argument at all.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kaba0 5y ago
Are they so vastly different? Other than perhaps Lisp and Elm, they are largely equivalent, with different levels of immutability on top of a largely imperative core. At least mention prolog, forth, SQL or the like that are truly different.
- k__ 5y ago
  They all have distiguishing features that can be emulated in other languages (to a degree) but will throw off even senior developers. Lisp has its macros. Elm has its type system. Go, Elixir, and JS have rather idiosyncratic concurrency models. Rust has its borrow checker. Perl seems to be SO special that even proficient Perl devs aren't able to write performant code in it. /s Sure, Prolog and SQL are much more different than the rest. But I didn't want to strawman here.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  Rust’s ownership model (which is more than just the borrow checker, it’s the whole concept of one location actually owning data, and aliasing XOR mutability, and the pervading effects of this design on the language and its libraries) is a really big deal, even if it doesn’t look like it would be at a casual glance. It changes how you approach programming and reason about systems, and truly is (or should be used as) a fundamentally different approach to data flow and what’s possible, a smidgeon like Prolog in that way of being different, though not as much. I miss it very frequently when working in other languages (which is mostly JavaScript these days), because there are plenty of things that just become impossible to express reliably without it. Working in another language you can adopt conventions of writing in this style, but you can’t verify it without representing it in the type system, so the result will be riddled with holes in other languages. (It is, however, difficult to disentangle some features that Rust’s ownership model requires but which aren’t necessarily a part of that ownership model: for example, algebraic data types are essential and expression orientation extremely desirable, but there are other languages which have those features without the rest of the ownership model.) People often think memory safety without garbage collection is Rust’s shtick, but it’s actually the ownership model that’s Rust’s defining feature, underpinning everything and making that possible.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Correct me if I’m wrong, but Pony lang brings Rust’s ownership model to the max - so as a niche language, do check it out!
travisjungroth 5y ago
This is still a pretty narrow group. Throw in APL, Prolog and Z3.
- goatlover 5y ago
  I just started playing with Dyalog APL after listening to the Array Cast. It’s mind bending stuff even after being familiar with Numpy and R. Makes most languages look clunky and cluttered for array manipulation. And the idea that a language can be designed around one data structure is elegant. Of course you get that in Lisp and Smalltalk as well. But having all those primitives that work over array structures is incredibly expressive. I believe the array podcasters when they claim array languages can be several times more productive than other languages, at least for domains that fit well with arrays.

by k__ 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kaba0 5y ago

Are they so vastly different? Other than perhaps Lisp and Elm, they are largely equivalent, with different levels of immutability on top of a largely imperative core. At least mention prolog, forth, SQL or the like that are truly different.

k__ 5y ago
They all have distiguishing features that can be emulated in other languages (to a degree) but will throw off even senior developers. Lisp has its macros. Elm has its type system. Go, Elixir, and JS have rather idiosyncratic concurrency models. Rust has its borrow checker. Perl seems to be SO special that even proficient Perl devs aren't able to write performant code in it. /s Sure, Prolog and SQL are much more different than the rest. But I didn't want to strawman here.
chrismorgan 5y ago
Rust’s ownership model (which is more than just the borrow checker, it’s the whole concept of one location actually owning data, and aliasing XOR mutability, and the pervading effects of this design on the language and its libraries) is a really big deal, even if it doesn’t look like it would be at a casual glance. It changes how you approach programming and reason about systems, and truly is (or should be used as) a fundamentally different approach to data flow and what’s possible, a smidgeon like Prolog in that way of being different, though not as much. I miss it very frequently when working in other languages (which is mostly JavaScript these days), because there are plenty of things that just become impossible to express reliably without it. Working in another language you can adopt conventions of writing in this style, but you can’t verify it without representing it in the type system, so the result will be riddled with holes in other languages. (It is, however, difficult to disentangle some features that Rust’s ownership model requires but which aren’t necessarily a part of that ownership model: for example, algebraic data types are essential and expression orientation extremely desirable, but there are other languages which have those features without the rest of the ownership model.) People often think memory safety without garbage collection is Rust’s shtick, but it’s actually the ownership model that’s Rust’s defining feature, underpinning everything and making that possible.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Correct me if I’m wrong, but Pony lang brings Rust’s ownership model to the max - so as a niche language, do check it out!

travisjungroth 5y ago

This is still a pretty narrow group. Throw in APL, Prolog and Z3.

goatlover 5y ago
I just started playing with Dyalog APL after listening to the Array Cast. It’s mind bending stuff even after being familiar with Numpy and R. Makes most languages look clunky and cluttered for array manipulation. And the idea that a language can be designed around one data structure is elegant. Of course you get that in Lisp and Smalltalk as well. But having all those primitives that work over array structures is incredibly expressive. I believe the array podcasters when they claim array languages can be several times more productive than other languages, at least for domains that fit well with arrays.