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There's some interest in interpreted C++ in the scientific community (e.g. ROOT), but C and C++ are just about the worst possible languages to run interpreted.

by qsort 3y ago

There's some interest in interpreted C++ in the scientific community (e.g. ROOT), but C and C++ are just about the worst possible languages to run interpreted. Ugly as it may be, the "interpreted shell, compiled core" approach is the winning one.

mananaysiempre 3y ago
C and C++ are about the worst possible languages to use for scripting—let alone interactive interfaces, which even the current crop of conventionally “scripting” languages is kind of bad at[1]. Having an interpreter to poke at in-development code, though, would IMO still be useful. (I wouldn’t use Haskell or SML/OCaml for scripting either, and yet I swear by their interpreters.) Even GDB has something like one—the expression fragment the “print” command understands includes casts, which means it can parse type names, and for unoptimized C that’s honestly half the battle. Or take it from (younger) Russ Cox[2]: > All current C environments suffer from a much larger problem, namely a lack of interactivity. You can’t sit at a prompt, enter C fragments, and see what happens. [1] http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html [2] https://swtch.com/~rsc/systems-2002.pdf https://swtch.com/~rsc/systems-2002.pdf
- saboot 3y ago
  Depends on the workflow, "C++ for scripting" helped to discover the higgs boson
- Mikhail_Edoshin 3y ago
  Python has an excellent interactive shell but I’m not sure this is such a blessing. It seems that nearly every package out there required you to use that shell to understand something mundane, like the type of a function result or properties of some object. I’d rather have good documentation instead.
- igouy 3y ago
  As-in "The advantage of using a normally compiled language is that code can be compiled once the prototype is debugged and refined. CINT is a C++ interpreter, making it a tool for rapid prototyping and scripting in C++." https://root.cern.ch/root/html534/guides/users-guide/CINT.html https://root.cern.ch/root/html534/guides/users-guide/CINT.ht...

by qsort 3y ago

mananaysiempre 3y ago

C and C++ are about the worst possible languages to use for scripting—let alone interactive interfaces, which even the current crop of conventionally “scripting” languages is kind of bad at[1]. Having an interpreter to poke at in-development code, though, would IMO still be useful. (I wouldn’t use Haskell or SML/OCaml for scripting either, and yet I swear by their interpreters.) Even GDB has something like one—the expression fragment the “print” command understands includes casts, which means it can parse type names, and for unoptimized C that’s honestly half the battle. Or take it from (younger) Russ Cox[2]: > All current C environments suffer from a much larger problem, namely a lack of interactivity. You can’t sit at a prompt, enter C fragments, and see what happens. [1] http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html [2] https://swtch.com/~rsc/systems-2002.pdf https://swtch.com/~rsc/systems-2002.pdf

saboot 3y ago
Depends on the workflow, "C++ for scripting" helped to discover the higgs boson
Mikhail_Edoshin 3y ago
Python has an excellent interactive shell but I’m not sure this is such a blessing. It seems that nearly every package out there required you to use that shell to understand something mundane, like the type of a function result or properties of some object. I’d rather have good documentation instead.
igouy 3y ago
As-in "The advantage of using a normally compiled language is that code can be compiled once the prototype is debugged and refined. CINT is a C++ interpreter, making it a tool for rapid prototyping and scripting in C++." https://root.cern.ch/root/html534/guides/users-guide/CINT.html https://root.cern.ch/root/html534/guides/users-guide/CINT.ht...