4 ms·

Native-GUI distributed system in a tweet

44 points by mpweiher 4y ago

forgotpwd16 4y ago
Interesting though it appears to be a straightforward server/client application so not sure why it's called distributed. That said I'm confused about what Objective-S is even after reading the about page (http://objective.st/About http://objective.st/About).
- mpweiher 4y ago
  „ Client-server model is a distributed application structure …“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client–server_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client–server_model
  - forgotpwd16 4y ago
    I guess technically it's correct then. Distributed always makes me think of p2p systems.
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      Is it technically correct to call any app that writes to S3 a "distributed system"? It doesn't seem like distributed system in the "distributed computing" sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing
      - toast0 4y ago
        S3 is itself a distributed system, so yeah. You've got the two generals problem, it's distributed.
        CharlesW 4y ago
        Oh good! That means I’m a distributed systems expert.
- oceankid 4y ago
  The language on the website seems to be targeted to an audience with knowledge of a subset of languages. Instead it would help if it talked about the problem it seems to solve for a regular "general purpose" programmer. Doesn't help that the author comes off as super defensive.
junon 4y ago
I don't agree with the assertion that "[Rust, C, etc.] are not general purpose languages but instead DSLs for algorithms". This is one of those "profound" statements that I simply find nonsensical, as if the semantics themselves somehow made a point. Conversely, I see Objective-S as just a batteries-included, insanely high level declarative language. How is that any less of a DSL, per the creator's logic? Plus, saying that your language is the "first [real] general purpose language" is a bit smug.
- ducktective 4y ago
  >is a bit smug. I choose unorthodox and provocative ideas over conservative bore of docile academic terms any day. You call it being smug, I call it scientific confidence needed for progress.
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    Perhaps the biggest problem with Objective-S is that it isn’t tied to a FAANG?
    - theamk 4y ago
      nah, there are tons of non-FAANG languages which don't try to redefine common terms and clearly explain their advantages. They get much better reception. (D and Nim immediately come to mind)
  - junon 4y ago
    > unorthodox and provocative ideas Marketing drivel. You choose marketing drivel over science. That's how I read that sentence.
    - mpweiher 4y ago
      It ain't "marketing drivel". If it were, it would be an utter failure. It is a profound insight. It might be a wrong profound insight, but "drivel" it ain't.
alexashka 4y ago
What is the difference between this and creating a GUI the good old fashioned way and having a textfield subclass that knows how to two-way bind its value to a remote value? In other words, if we ignore syntax, what is the fundamentally new capability?
- Rodeoclash 4y ago
  Developer productivity by the looks of it
- mpweiher 4y ago
  > what is the fundamentally new capability? There hasn't been any fundamentally new capability since (pick your favourite): 1. the Turing Machine 2. the Lambda Calculus 3. the stored program computer 4. the NAND gate No high level language has ever added any fundamentally new capability, everything it can do can be done in machine language. See also: compilers and interpreters. High level languages are purely for human convenience, they exist in order to allow us to express what we want to accomplish in a straightforward manner. When the two don't match, we have an impedance mismatch, one of the most famous ones was using goto for control structures (https://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/Dijkstra68.pdf https://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/Dijkstra68.p...), solved by the introduction of structured programming. Today we also have such an impedance mismatch, because most of what we do is no longer procedural in nature, but our means for expressing this are essentially procedural. My last long-form attempt at explaining this was here: https://2020.programming-conference.org/details/salon-2020-papers/5/Can-Programmers-Escape-the-Gentle-Tyranny-of-call-return- https://2020.programming-conference.org/details/salon-2020-p... For the domain of GUIs (one area where the mismatch is particularly painful and obvious), Stéphane Chatty did a much better job of explaining the problem than I did: https://dl.ifip.org/db/conf/ehci/ehci2007/Chatty07.pdf https://dl.ifip.org/db/conf/ehci/ehci2007/Chatty07.pdf So the "new capability" in Objective-S is having linguistic support for architectural abstractions, so you can directly express components and connectors and their connections. Rather than just implementing them with procedures. And GUI bindings are a good example (which I also talk about in my "Tyranny" paper): we can implement in current programming languages, but we generally cannot express them in the language.
PoignardAzur 4y ago
> I hope this makes it clear, or at least strongly hints, that this is not the usual low-code/no-code trick of achieving compact code by creating super-specialised components and mechanisms that work well for a specific application, but immediately break down when pushed beyond the demo. That's... not clear at all to me. This seems like the kind of code that is fun to write, annoying to read, infuriating to debug. The dataflow part where text flows into an S3 file is interesting, but it feels like as you get into corner cases that need more complex transformations with more potential bugs, the "just bind this value to its destination" syntax would quickly become cumbersome, and you'd want something closer to RxJS.
Shish2k 4y ago
> Objective-S script is actually not code golf, although it may appear as such … this is not the compliment that you think it is

44 points by mpweiher 4y ago

Interesting though it appears to be a straightforward server/client application so not sure why it's called distributed. That said I'm confused about what Objective-S is even after reading the about page (http://objective.st/About http://objective.st/About).

mpweiher 4y ago
„ Client-server model is a distributed application structure …“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client–server_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client–server_model
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  I guess technically it's correct then. Distributed always makes me think of p2p systems.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Is it technically correct to call any app that writes to S3 a "distributed system"? It doesn't seem like distributed system in the "distributed computing" sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing
    - toast0 4y ago
      S3 is itself a distributed system, so yeah. You've got the two generals problem, it's distributed.
      - CharlesW 4y ago
        Oh good! That means I’m a distributed systems expert.
oceankid 4y ago
The language on the website seems to be targeted to an audience with knowledge of a subset of languages. Instead it would help if it talked about the problem it seems to solve for a regular "general purpose" programmer. Doesn't help that the author comes off as super defensive.

junon 4y ago

I don't agree with the assertion that "[Rust, C, etc.] are not general purpose languages but instead DSLs for algorithms". This is one of those "profound" statements that I simply find nonsensical, as if the semantics themselves somehow made a point. Conversely, I see Objective-S as just a batteries-included, insanely high level declarative language. How is that any less of a DSL, per the creator's logic? Plus, saying that your language is the "first [real] general purpose language" is a bit smug.

ducktective 4y ago
>is a bit smug. I choose unorthodox and provocative ideas over conservative bore of docile academic terms any day. You call it being smug, I call it scientific confidence needed for progress.
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  Perhaps the biggest problem with Objective-S is that it isn’t tied to a FAANG?
  - theamk 4y ago
    nah, there are tons of non-FAANG languages which don't try to redefine common terms and clearly explain their advantages. They get much better reception. (D and Nim immediately come to mind)
- junon 4y ago
  > unorthodox and provocative ideas Marketing drivel. You choose marketing drivel over science. That's how I read that sentence.
  - mpweiher 4y ago
    It ain't "marketing drivel". If it were, it would be an utter failure. It is a profound insight. It might be a wrong profound insight, but "drivel" it ain't.

alexashka 4y ago

What is the difference between this and creating a GUI the good old fashioned way and having a textfield subclass that knows how to two-way bind its value to a remote value? In other words, if we ignore syntax, what is the fundamentally new capability?

Rodeoclash 4y ago
Developer productivity by the looks of it
mpweiher 4y ago
> what is the fundamentally new capability? There hasn't been any fundamentally new capability since (pick your favourite): 1. the Turing Machine 2. the Lambda Calculus 3. the stored program computer 4. the NAND gate No high level language has ever added any fundamentally new capability, everything it can do can be done in machine language. See also: compilers and interpreters. High level languages are purely for human convenience, they exist in order to allow us to express what we want to accomplish in a straightforward manner. When the two don't match, we have an impedance mismatch, one of the most famous ones was using goto for control structures (https://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/Dijkstra68.pdf https://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/Dijkstra68.p...), solved by the introduction of structured programming. Today we also have such an impedance mismatch, because most of what we do is no longer procedural in nature, but our means for expressing this are essentially procedural. My last long-form attempt at explaining this was here: https://2020.programming-conference.org/details/salon-2020-papers/5/Can-Programmers-Escape-the-Gentle-Tyranny-of-call-return- https://2020.programming-conference.org/details/salon-2020-p... For the domain of GUIs (one area where the mismatch is particularly painful and obvious), Stéphane Chatty did a much better job of explaining the problem than I did: https://dl.ifip.org/db/conf/ehci/ehci2007/Chatty07.pdf https://dl.ifip.org/db/conf/ehci/ehci2007/Chatty07.pdf So the "new capability" in Objective-S is having linguistic support for architectural abstractions, so you can directly express components and connectors and their connections. Rather than just implementing them with procedures. And GUI bindings are a good example (which I also talk about in my "Tyranny" paper): we can implement in current programming languages, but we generally cannot express them in the language.

PoignardAzur 4y ago

> I hope this makes it clear, or at least strongly hints, that this is not the usual low-code/no-code trick of achieving compact code by creating super-specialised components and mechanisms that work well for a specific application, but immediately break down when pushed beyond the demo. That's... not clear at all to me. This seems like the kind of code that is fun to write, annoying to read, infuriating to debug. The dataflow part where text flows into an S3 file is interesting, but it feels like as you get into corner cases that need more complex transformations with more potential bugs, the "just bind this value to its destination" syntax would quickly become cumbersome, and you'd want something closer to RxJS.

Shish2k 4y ago

> Objective-S script is actually not code golf, although it may appear as such … this is not the compliment that you think it is