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There was a bit of discussion yesterday about 'immaturity' in the programming community. To me, this is an example of a broader immaturity. Mature people/organ

There was a bit of discussion yesterday about 'immaturity' in the programming community. To me, this is an example of a broader immaturity. Mature people/organizations are willing to give up their local minimum for greater good of the community (global minimum). This would include staying with a language where the standards don't always go your way. Immature people/organizations say "I'm going to create my own language! With blackjack and hookers!". And the programming landscape fragments further...

not_the_fda 4y ago
And we all know how well Goggle is at keeping interest in its side projects.
UncleMeat 4y ago
A lot of people don't think that a frozen ABI is for the greater good of the community. It is specifically good for the set of people who cannot recompile their dependencies or cannot recompile their binaries. That's an ever-shrinking population.
- menaerus 4y ago
  > That's an ever-shrinking population. Is that really so? I really can't imagine that "recompiling the world" when the ABI is changed would be considered a normal thing to do or expect from users. Like, all of the sudden all the software that we use on our machines becomes subtly broken since, well, new version of C or C++ runtime library is now out. I really don't see how this can be considered as a reasonable thing to do and therefore I understand and support the slow and careful ABI increments because the language is there to serve the goal which is beyond being a hostage to a handful of big players.
  - still_grokking 4y ago
    > I really can't imagine that "recompiling the world" when the ABI is changed would be considered a normal thing to do or expect from users. > I really don't see how this can be considered as a reasonable thing to do […] Well, Linux distributions do exactly this, since decades, and it works just fine.
    - menaerus 4y ago
      And with the loose ABI model, how much more often they'd have to do that?
      - still_grokking 4y ago
        Does it matter? It's not like some dude needs to operate a crank for it to happen… The computer does the actual work. You know, a computer, this machine that can automate tedious tasks.
        menaerus 4y ago
        I think it does. It also opens another big hole of worms of maintaining and porting the existing software. And it also opens another question which is: how often should we allow to break the ABI? On regular basis, semi-regular basis, rare, very rare etc. And who defines this threshold? What do you think the reasons are that ABI transition didn't happen already?
        still_grokking 4y ago
        In an ideal world you would just need to "press a button". So this could happen every second day without any issue. Of course things are more complex. Not everything is a Linux distribution where it's simple to rebuild the world. But as the history of C++ shows people managed to life with this issue for a very long time. So it's not a show stopper in any way. Even other very conservative languages like Java found a balance for breaking changes. The "problem" C++ has is more of a mental one, imho. Also C++ could easily introduced the "editions" concept form Rust. This would give you all form both worlds. You could improve future version (or editions) but stay compatible to old ones at the same time.
        menaerus 4y ago
        Rebuilding trillions LoC that are deployed on literally every computer architecture, dozens of toolchains and OS's is a high impact and high risk problem with arguable benefits. Although it is technically possible, I don't think it is a process which "just happens" but it is a process which probably take years to be implemented on each and every platform. So, I don't think it's a "C++ mentality" but its rather a difficult problem to solve. > Also C++ could easily introduced the "editions" concept form Rust. This would give you all form both worlds. We'll see in about 20 years time if "editions" will solve this problem and if Rust becomes as widespread as C++ is. LoC deployed in Rust is currently a statistical error in comparison to C++. FWIW C++ also had similar proposal and it didn't went through AFAIK.
  - jcelerier 4y ago
    It's not the users who would recompile the world though, but the OS vendors. And really in 2022 with a threadripper, rebuilding the world is a matter of hours: my 2018 laptop can build a complete yocto environment from scratch, from GCC down to a Qt GUI running on X11 or wayland in 8-ish hours IIRC and is waaay slower than a TR, so really there's no excuse to not rebuild. Previous ABI would still be provided for running proprietary software on Linux just like you can still install libstdc++5. On windows apps ship the c++ runtime along with them so nothing changes for old apps. MacOS users are used to compatibility breaking every 3/4 years and went through actual architecture changes once every decade so obviously changing c++ abi is minor in comparison
    - menaerus 4y ago
      Please don't nitpick, I'm perfectly aware that the OS vendors would be the ones to recompile everything and users the ones to update their systems. I don't agree with your sentiment as I read it as a little bit narrow-minded and I also consider the examples given to be bad, with design choices not quite feasible to be applied to generic and widespread community language such as C++. > On windows apps ship the c++ runtime along with them so nothing changes for old apps That combination is probably the worst from the both worlds so not exactly a shiny example. > MacOS users are used to compatibility breaking every 3/4 years Apple has always been special and I wouldn't consider their choices, which are almost exclusively aligned with what their business wants to achieve, to be something to be followed. They can do whatever they want because they're under total control of almost everything on their platform. Unless when they aren't and when they start to develop their own programming languages. Pretty much the same story as with Google.
      - jcelerier 4y ago
        Which users are you even talking about then? If you don't take into account Windows and macOS you remove 99.9% of the people which are going to be impacted by this (and I say this as a full-time linux user for a decade). > That combination is probably the worst from the both worlds so not exactly a shiny example. I really disagree, Windows's model of shipping DLLs along the app is the only one that works and does not cause headaches for the end-users who want to run their software from 15 years ago (e.g., me, my parents, my non-technical neighbours, etc) ; this is the only thing that matters, the end-user experience.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    In a world where dependencies are either delivered as source or through contract relationships with internet-connected businesses, I imagine that this is a normal thing. In the past you got code shipped to you on CDs. Today, I can get my dependencies via a network request. If you don't have the ability to rebuild or otherwise get updated dependencies, you've got problems beyond ABI stability. "I cannot rebuild my dependencies" is unacceptable from a vuln management perspective, for example.
still_grokking 4y ago
> And the programming landscape fragments further... This process is called evolution. There are only the two options when trying out new things: You fragment your language, or the language landscape. Most languages don't want to have incompatible versions so as a result new languages get created during the evolution process.
- sseagull 4y ago
  While true, I feel the pace of evolution is too fast at the moment. I am involved in scientific programming, and it's getting kind of crazy. This is a domain where programming is purely utilitarian, and what you are programming is more important. Unfortunately, new languages are driven by people who love programming for the sake of programming, and are often employed in big corporations that can absorb the financial cost of ecosystem duplication and fragmentation. The time scientists spend on 'infrastructure' is increasing, and I'm not sure that's always a good thing. (Some is good, of course).
  - carlmr 4y ago
    >I am involved in scientific programming, and it's getting kind of crazy. This is a domain where programming is purely utilitarian, and what you are programming is more important. In my experience this leads to a lot of bad programming by people who only care about the utilitarian aspect, not about maintainability, user experience or failure modes. Scientific programming would benefit the most from a stricter language that catches errors early on. Especially because most of the participants are usually not software engineers that have some semblance of a chance to catch errors in C++. Even they make a lot of mistakes.
- blub 4y ago
  In evolution, most branches are dead-ends (just like in programming languages). Carbon for example is by design an evolutionary dead-end designed to solve some problems for Google. They’re trying to sell it as a generic tool, but knowing Google’s track record it’s hard to say how many will bite.
  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

not_the_fda 4y ago

And we all know how well Goggle is at keeping interest in its side projects.

UncleMeat 4y ago

A lot of people don't think that a frozen ABI is for the greater good of the community. It is specifically good for the set of people who cannot recompile their dependencies or cannot recompile their binaries. That's an ever-shrinking population.

menaerus 4y ago
> That's an ever-shrinking population. Is that really so? I really can't imagine that "recompiling the world" when the ABI is changed would be considered a normal thing to do or expect from users. Like, all of the sudden all the software that we use on our machines becomes subtly broken since, well, new version of C or C++ runtime library is now out. I really don't see how this can be considered as a reasonable thing to do and therefore I understand and support the slow and careful ABI increments because the language is there to serve the goal which is beyond being a hostage to a handful of big players.
- still_grokking 4y ago
  > I really can't imagine that "recompiling the world" when the ABI is changed would be considered a normal thing to do or expect from users. > I really don't see how this can be considered as a reasonable thing to do […] Well, Linux distributions do exactly this, since decades, and it works just fine.
  - menaerus 4y ago
    And with the loose ABI model, how much more often they'd have to do that?
    - still_grokking 4y ago
      Does it matter? It's not like some dude needs to operate a crank for it to happen… The computer does the actual work. You know, a computer, this machine that can automate tedious tasks.
      - menaerus 4y ago
        I think it does. It also opens another big hole of worms of maintaining and porting the existing software. And it also opens another question which is: how often should we allow to break the ABI? On regular basis, semi-regular basis, rare, very rare etc. And who defines this threshold? What do you think the reasons are that ABI transition didn't happen already?
        still_grokking 4y ago
        In an ideal world you would just need to "press a button". So this could happen every second day without any issue. Of course things are more complex. Not everything is a Linux distribution where it's simple to rebuild the world. But as the history of C++ shows people managed to life with this issue for a very long time. So it's not a show stopper in any way. Even other very conservative languages like Java found a balance for breaking changes. The "problem" C++ has is more of a mental one, imho. Also C++ could easily introduced the "editions" concept form Rust. This would give you all form both worlds. You could improve future version (or editions) but stay compatible to old ones at the same time.
        menaerus 4y ago
        Rebuilding trillions LoC that are deployed on literally every computer architecture, dozens of toolchains and OS's is a high impact and high risk problem with arguable benefits. Although it is technically possible, I don't think it is a process which "just happens" but it is a process which probably take years to be implemented on each and every platform. So, I don't think it's a "C++ mentality" but its rather a difficult problem to solve. > Also C++ could easily introduced the "editions" concept form Rust. This would give you all form both worlds. We'll see in about 20 years time if "editions" will solve this problem and if Rust becomes as widespread as C++ is. LoC deployed in Rust is currently a statistical error in comparison to C++. FWIW C++ also had similar proposal and it didn't went through AFAIK.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  It's not the users who would recompile the world though, but the OS vendors. And really in 2022 with a threadripper, rebuilding the world is a matter of hours: my 2018 laptop can build a complete yocto environment from scratch, from GCC down to a Qt GUI running on X11 or wayland in 8-ish hours IIRC and is waaay slower than a TR, so really there's no excuse to not rebuild. Previous ABI would still be provided for running proprietary software on Linux just like you can still install libstdc++5. On windows apps ship the c++ runtime along with them so nothing changes for old apps. MacOS users are used to compatibility breaking every 3/4 years and went through actual architecture changes once every decade so obviously changing c++ abi is minor in comparison
  - menaerus 4y ago
    Please don't nitpick, I'm perfectly aware that the OS vendors would be the ones to recompile everything and users the ones to update their systems. I don't agree with your sentiment as I read it as a little bit narrow-minded and I also consider the examples given to be bad, with design choices not quite feasible to be applied to generic and widespread community language such as C++. > On windows apps ship the c++ runtime along with them so nothing changes for old apps That combination is probably the worst from the both worlds so not exactly a shiny example. > MacOS users are used to compatibility breaking every 3/4 years Apple has always been special and I wouldn't consider their choices, which are almost exclusively aligned with what their business wants to achieve, to be something to be followed. They can do whatever they want because they're under total control of almost everything on their platform. Unless when they aren't and when they start to develop their own programming languages. Pretty much the same story as with Google.
    - jcelerier 4y ago
      Which users are you even talking about then? If you don't take into account Windows and macOS you remove 99.9% of the people which are going to be impacted by this (and I say this as a full-time linux user for a decade). > That combination is probably the worst from the both worlds so not exactly a shiny example. I really disagree, Windows's model of shipping DLLs along the app is the only one that works and does not cause headaches for the end-users who want to run their software from 15 years ago (e.g., me, my parents, my non-technical neighbours, etc) ; this is the only thing that matters, the end-user experience.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  In a world where dependencies are either delivered as source or through contract relationships with internet-connected businesses, I imagine that this is a normal thing. In the past you got code shipped to you on CDs. Today, I can get my dependencies via a network request. If you don't have the ability to rebuild or otherwise get updated dependencies, you've got problems beyond ABI stability. "I cannot rebuild my dependencies" is unacceptable from a vuln management perspective, for example.

still_grokking 4y ago

> And the programming landscape fragments further... This process is called evolution. There are only the two options when trying out new things: You fragment your language, or the language landscape. Most languages don't want to have incompatible versions so as a result new languages get created during the evolution process.

sseagull 4y ago
While true, I feel the pace of evolution is too fast at the moment. I am involved in scientific programming, and it's getting kind of crazy. This is a domain where programming is purely utilitarian, and what you are programming is more important. Unfortunately, new languages are driven by people who love programming for the sake of programming, and are often employed in big corporations that can absorb the financial cost of ecosystem duplication and fragmentation. The time scientists spend on 'infrastructure' is increasing, and I'm not sure that's always a good thing. (Some is good, of course).
- carlmr 4y ago
  >I am involved in scientific programming, and it's getting kind of crazy. This is a domain where programming is purely utilitarian, and what you are programming is more important. In my experience this leads to a lot of bad programming by people who only care about the utilitarian aspect, not about maintainability, user experience or failure modes. Scientific programming would benefit the most from a stricter language that catches errors early on. Especially because most of the participants are usually not software engineers that have some semblance of a chance to catch errors in C++. Even they make a lot of mistakes.
blub 4y ago
In evolution, most branches are dead-ends (just like in programming languages). Carbon for example is by design an evolutionary dead-end designed to solve some problems for Google. They’re trying to sell it as a generic tool, but knowing Google’s track record it’s hard to say how many will bite.
- 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]