5 ms·

I'm assuming you'd rather see them focus on declarative programming, because it seems to be the big thing among enthusiasts and hobbyists. Google works with so

by zxcdw 14y ago

I'm assuming you'd rather see them focus on declarative programming, because it seems to be the big thing among enthusiasts and hobbyists. Google works with software projects with planned lifetime of decades. It's far better to rely on imperative programming concepts which are tested and trusted with experience grown from what, 50's or so. Sure, declarative programming is a nice toy, but that's all. I'm yet to see major companies investing millions, if not billions of capital on a system written in declarative languages. We all "know" functional programming "is the future", but yet nobody trusts their money and time on them. I still wonder if there are major commercial projects started with say Python or Ruby, or JavaScript which have planned lifetimes to 2030 and beyond.

tbrownaw 14y ago
I'm yet to see major companies investing millions, if not billions of capital on a system written in declarative languages. We all "know" functional programming "is the future", but yet nobody trusts their money and time on them. SQL is declarative. Erlang is kinda-sorta functional, and was developed specifically to run expensive high-uptime telecom systems.
- zxcdw 14y ago
  ...both of which are domain specific languages, or developed as such. I really think C++ is going to gnaw "market share" from C in any low-level domains and fight back Go and other competitors in high-level systems programming domains thanks to it's recent C++11 standard and upcoming standard library extensions which being the transition of making it much more on-par with other modern languages. Bjarne Stroustrup(the language creator) has also hinted for much faster standardization process than last time around(when it took some 13 years to come up with a new standard), and would hope for a 5 year cycle instead, so perhaps C++16 is coming up next. Oh, and the standards committee is already working on it. The only major setback I see with C++11 in comparison to many other languages aimed for large-scale software development is it's very small standard library which completely lacks support for modern technologies such as hierarchical filesystems, sockets, XML and HTTP and so on. They are coming up later on, though. The core language is very solid and doesn't lack anything special. Yet, it's not any more "bloated" or complex by it's standard(in terms of page/line/word count) than say C# 3.0 or Java 7. tl;dr: I think many people think C++ is "old" or even dead and we need something more modern, yet now C++ evolves faster than ever and tries to meet that demand.
  - cmccabe 14y ago
    Yes, truly the only thing holding C++ back has been lack of features. Have a link: http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/
    - zxcdw 14y ago
      Nice, but you're 4 years late, sir! Everything can be viewed in a bad light if it's wanted to and we both know it. So how about actually talking about the bigger picture, and problems with programming languages and the actual art of creating large-scale software rather than trying to be smart?
      - cmccabe 14y ago
        C++0x has some useful features, but it doesn't address Yossi's complaints about C++, which are at a more fundamental level.
        zxcdw 14y ago
        Yossi, by his own words, is a whiner. The fundamental reason behind is attitude towards C++ is to stir up controversy, rather than to provide objective criticism. If his attitude was sincere, I'm sure he wouldn't have spent so much effort in mastering the language.
        cmccabe 14y ago
        ad hominem.
        zxcdw 14y ago
        ...which is completely fine when is not used as an attempt to debunk the argument, but show that the information is biased. Any form of critique towards a biased source can always be countered with claims of it being an ad hominem argument - which it strictly speaking usually is - but that alone does not make the critique false or the original source any more reliable. As an example, many of the points Yossi makes are subjective and opinionated and as such FQA is nowhere near an unbiased and reliable source of problems within the language. Nobody who actually wants to be serious about the subject cites FQA as a whole. At best, individual points he makes with which many agree with. Including Bjarne himself.
fijal 14y ago
Meerkat telescope project has lifespan of at least 20 years and it's control-and-monitoring software is being written in Python. This is to answer your direct question only because I fail to understand how your paragraphs fit together.
bzbarsky 14y ago
Hedge fund trading code may not have "2030 and beyond" lifetime, but it's certainly something major companies are investing a good bit of money into. Also tends to be in OCaml...
- batista 14y ago
  Or rather: some hedge fund (of thousands all over the world) uses OCalml (Jane Street, IIRC). That does not equate to "hedge fund trading code tends to be in Ocaml".
  - bzbarsky 14y ago
    It's not just Jane Street at this point. Jane Street has been using OCaml for a while, and others heve been picking it up too...
krickle 14y ago
My understanding is that a significant number of quants use Haskell.
sanderjd 14y ago
You seem to be using a definition of "declarative" that I'm unfamiliar with. The functional languages you target in the second to last paragraph are very different from the more imperative languages in the final paragraph, and I wouldn't consider either group to be "declarative". I'm left wondering what concepts you're attempting to criticize. Having said all that, yes, I believe major commercial projects are started in those languages, though I have no idea if anybody plans them into the 2030s.
- zxcdw 14y ago
  Functional languages are declarative. The point is that there are two kinds of languages; languages which people bitch about and languages which nobody uses. Sure, I can mention tons of commercial projects which are started in those languages, and which use them at least partly(for example Python for scripting interface). However, I really doubt none of the languages provide a solid ground to build upon(even if we weren't talking about systems programming and it's future). Consider C and C++ for example; in what language is the OS you are using written in? The compiler it's compiled with? The libraries you use? The web browser? The JavaScript interpreter? You get the point. The fundamental systems we use are built upon these two languages, and I think it's a big problem people would want to address(myself included), because these languages are nowhere near perfect. There just aren't better alternatives for that domain, considering: 1) existing codebase 2) libraries 3) tools 4) efficiency 5) portability 6) programmer availability, resources and education 7) language reliability and future proofness(e.g. backwards compatibility, vendor and thus platform independence). These are real problems when it comes to building reliable abstractions(that's the whole essence of systems programming, isn't it?), and thus far C and C++ have been the only languages which have been able to provide all of those the best. When it comes to the future of computing from a hardware level, things may(or may not) seem a bit better; for example utilizing GPUs for general computing, using low-power ARM/x86 cores for parallelism. There are foundations for these things in C(and now C++ too) and libraries to help programming these things. How many years will it take to get a reliable Go or Rust support for programming a vendor-independent GPU? What's the overhead compared to say C or C++? The alleviating thing here is that GPUs and ARM cores aren't CISC machines so compilers and thus software is highly responsible for the performance, so with a good compiler you can get away with using less efficient implementation language, and get gradual improvements too.

by zxcdw 14y ago

tbrownaw 14y ago

I'm yet to see major companies investing millions, if not billions of capital on a system written in declarative languages. We all "know" functional programming "is the future", but yet nobody trusts their money and time on them. SQL is declarative. Erlang is kinda-sorta functional, and was developed specifically to run expensive high-uptime telecom systems.

zxcdw 14y ago
...both of which are domain specific languages, or developed as such. I really think C++ is going to gnaw "market share" from C in any low-level domains and fight back Go and other competitors in high-level systems programming domains thanks to it's recent C++11 standard and upcoming standard library extensions which being the transition of making it much more on-par with other modern languages. Bjarne Stroustrup(the language creator) has also hinted for much faster standardization process than last time around(when it took some 13 years to come up with a new standard), and would hope for a 5 year cycle instead, so perhaps C++16 is coming up next. Oh, and the standards committee is already working on it. The only major setback I see with C++11 in comparison to many other languages aimed for large-scale software development is it's very small standard library which completely lacks support for modern technologies such as hierarchical filesystems, sockets, XML and HTTP and so on. They are coming up later on, though. The core language is very solid and doesn't lack anything special. Yet, it's not any more "bloated" or complex by it's standard(in terms of page/line/word count) than say C# 3.0 or Java 7. tl;dr: I think many people think C++ is "old" or even dead and we need something more modern, yet now C++ evolves faster than ever and tries to meet that demand.
- cmccabe 14y ago
  Yes, truly the only thing holding C++ back has been lack of features. Have a link: http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/
  - zxcdw 14y ago
    Nice, but you're 4 years late, sir! Everything can be viewed in a bad light if it's wanted to and we both know it. So how about actually talking about the bigger picture, and problems with programming languages and the actual art of creating large-scale software rather than trying to be smart?
    - cmccabe 14y ago
      C++0x has some useful features, but it doesn't address Yossi's complaints about C++, which are at a more fundamental level.
      - zxcdw 14y ago
        Yossi, by his own words, is a whiner. The fundamental reason behind is attitude towards C++ is to stir up controversy, rather than to provide objective criticism. If his attitude was sincere, I'm sure he wouldn't have spent so much effort in mastering the language.
        cmccabe 14y ago
        ad hominem.
        zxcdw 14y ago
        ...which is completely fine when is not used as an attempt to debunk the argument, but show that the information is biased. Any form of critique towards a biased source can always be countered with claims of it being an ad hominem argument - which it strictly speaking usually is - but that alone does not make the critique false or the original source any more reliable. As an example, many of the points Yossi makes are subjective and opinionated and as such FQA is nowhere near an unbiased and reliable source of problems within the language. Nobody who actually wants to be serious about the subject cites FQA as a whole. At best, individual points he makes with which many agree with. Including Bjarne himself.

fijal 14y ago

Meerkat telescope project has lifespan of at least 20 years and it's control-and-monitoring software is being written in Python. This is to answer your direct question only because I fail to understand how your paragraphs fit together.

bzbarsky 14y ago

Hedge fund trading code may not have "2030 and beyond" lifetime, but it's certainly something major companies are investing a good bit of money into. Also tends to be in OCaml...

batista 14y ago
Or rather: some hedge fund (of thousands all over the world) uses OCalml (Jane Street, IIRC). That does not equate to "hedge fund trading code tends to be in Ocaml".
- bzbarsky 14y ago
  It's not just Jane Street at this point. Jane Street has been using OCaml for a while, and others heve been picking it up too...

krickle 14y ago

My understanding is that a significant number of quants use Haskell.

sanderjd 14y ago

You seem to be using a definition of "declarative" that I'm unfamiliar with. The functional languages you target in the second to last paragraph are very different from the more imperative languages in the final paragraph, and I wouldn't consider either group to be "declarative". I'm left wondering what concepts you're attempting to criticize. Having said all that, yes, I believe major commercial projects are started in those languages, though I have no idea if anybody plans them into the 2030s.

zxcdw 14y ago
Functional languages are declarative. The point is that there are two kinds of languages; languages which people bitch about and languages which nobody uses. Sure, I can mention tons of commercial projects which are started in those languages, and which use them at least partly(for example Python for scripting interface). However, I really doubt none of the languages provide a solid ground to build upon(even if we weren't talking about systems programming and it's future). Consider C and C++ for example; in what language is the OS you are using written in? The compiler it's compiled with? The libraries you use? The web browser? The JavaScript interpreter? You get the point. The fundamental systems we use are built upon these two languages, and I think it's a big problem people would want to address(myself included), because these languages are nowhere near perfect. There just aren't better alternatives for that domain, considering: 1) existing codebase 2) libraries 3) tools 4) efficiency 5) portability 6) programmer availability, resources and education 7) language reliability and future proofness(e.g. backwards compatibility, vendor and thus platform independence). These are real problems when it comes to building reliable abstractions(that's the whole essence of systems programming, isn't it?), and thus far C and C++ have been the only languages which have been able to provide all of those the best. When it comes to the future of computing from a hardware level, things may(or may not) seem a bit better; for example utilizing GPUs for general computing, using low-power ARM/x86 cores for parallelism. There are foundations for these things in C(and now C++ too) and libraries to help programming these things. How many years will it take to get a reliable Go or Rust support for programming a vendor-independent GPU? What's the overhead compared to say C or C++? The alleviating thing here is that GPUs and ARM cores aren't CISC machines so compilers and thus software is highly responsible for the performance, so with a good compiler you can get away with using less efficient implementation language, and get gradual improvements too.