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In what sense is Metal descendent from PostScript? The comparison is anything but perfect: they're practically polar opposites. Metal isn't a text based progra

In what sense is Metal descendent from PostScript? The comparison is anything but perfect: they're practically polar opposites. Metal isn't a text based programming language like PostScript, and it has a completely different graphics model. PostScript isn't pixel oriented, or 3d oriented, and Metal doesn't have a stencil/paint graphics model or text rendering. They're totally different things, by totally different people and organizations. Metal uses SPIR-V binary byte code, which is nothing like PostScript, a stack based high level polymorphic cross between Lisp or Forth, and a descendent of Interpres, JaM, and Design System. As programming languages go, and as imaging models go, PostScript and Metal are at completely different ends of the spectrum. SVG, like PDF, is the PostScript stencil/paint imaging mode, without the Turing complete programming language, but expressed as XML, with some CSS thrown in. And some implementation of SVG even let you define event handlers in JavaScript, but Metal sure doesn't let you do that. And to top it off, SVG is "object oriented" (i.e. a DOM) while Metal is "immediate mode" (i.e. an API). They couldn't be more different. Since your facts are wrong, and you're throwing around insults like "ugly prejudices" and "trivial and nonsensical" and "ridiculous" and "people who don't know things" and "I've touched a nerve" and "I find it ugly", then it's a good thing that you're "leaving the convo", because you haven't contributed anything but misinformation and insults. More about PostScript and its history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21968175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21968175

astrange 4y ago
> Metal uses SPIR-V binary byte code It certainly doesn't, except that they're both LLVM based. As the article says, Apple can't use anything from Khronos.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  That's right, I was mistaken. The point I was trying to make is that compiled shader languages are very unlike dynamically interpreted PostScript, which is much more like Lisp or Smalltalk than C or C++.

astrange 4y ago

> Metal uses SPIR-V binary byte code It certainly doesn't, except that they're both LLVM based. As the article says, Apple can't use anything from Khronos.

DonHopkins 4y ago
That's right, I was mistaken. The point I was trying to make is that compiled shader languages are very unlike dynamically interpreted PostScript, which is much more like Lisp or Smalltalk than C or C++.