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Yes, your background isn't relevant--and Brin's even less so--but it does make for some nice anchoring. PL theory, as a "body of work" has produced a wide ran
by tikhonj 13y ago
Yes, your background isn't relevant--and Brin's even less so--but it does make for some nice anchoring.
PL theory, as a "body of work" has produced a wide range of languages ranging from Agda to Scala to Java. Some of these have actually seen use! Everything from classical music to Justin Beiber. TAPL, for example, is certainly not limited to the less popular languages: it talks about the foundation for Java-style types as well. Some of the same people working on ML and Haskell are also behind designs of Java and C#.
The point of a language like Haskell is to be expressive and useful, not to appeal to a large base population. Popularity and industry uptake are not the only measures of success. (This is, coincidentally, one of the things I don't like much about Berkeley's graduate program, or at least the systems lab I spent a bit of time in: they did seem to think industry uptake to be the only metric that mattered.)
Beyond languages, PL theory serves the role of all theory: it's the foundation upon which everything else is built. Things like the JVM memory model are based on the theory themselves and designed with tools stemming directly from that theory. Sure, the average programmer on the street is never going to use a theorem prover, but they will use the JVM where the memory model has been verified with one.
All this reminds of nothing more than the usual arguments that Linux is a complete failure because nobody uses it on the desktop. But I think that argument is not true even if you limit yourself to "Linux on the desktop is a failure": sure, not many people use Linux on the desktop, but the ones who do find it very useful and are exceptionally productive. Same principle applies to PL theory and functional programming languages.
There are many different ways to have an effect in the world, and the most obvious and direct one is not necessarily best. Even if it feels best.
- urbit 13y agos/the foundation upon which everything else is built/a foundation on which everything else can be built. If you'll accept this change, we don't disagree at all. (Also, it is a serious overstatement to attribute Java and C# to PL theorists. Gilad Bracha is not James Gosling. PL theorists have contributed to some extensions to these languages. Typically, the extensions that confuse people and make them feel stupid.) The difference between the foundation and a foundation is enormous, because (with your very large expensive foundation) you are asking programmers either to program without knowing the foundations of their work, or to learn a large and challenging body of mathematics. And you know, higher-order typed programming is good enough that it's almost worth it. For most potential customers, however, learning PL theory does not seem to be worth it. Nor are they comfortable in programming in Haskell, a very powerful and complex environment, without understanding it. It's this "the customer is just wrong" attitude that makes some of us sense an area ripe for disruption. Pride goeth before a fall.
- effn 13y ago> It's this "the customer is just wrong" attitude that makes some of us sense an area ripe for disruption. Pride goeth before a fall. Doesn't this apply to syntax as well?
- urbit 13y agoIt does. And the best I can say is that I'm genuinely interested in the results of my experiment. It would certainly be an interesting practical experiment to try to adapt a conventional syntax to the same semantics, or even to discard Hoon and create a more conventional language targeting Nock (which Urbit would have no trouble running).
- adultSwim 13y agoThis is an excellent line of reasoning. PL research just hasn't had much affect at all on mainstream programming. It's too bad. The PL world has a lot of good ideas. It's unfortunate they try to make them totally inaccessible. Worse still that industry has no interest in raiding the PL world. A lot of the languages that have been designed are perfectly usable by mere mortals and a real step up from languages coming out of industry. Compare OCaml and Java in 1996. OCaml (then Caml Special Light) was clearly the better language. Why didn't anyone get to use it?
- urbit 13y agoThe ugly reality is that because of the actual mistakes the PL world (or even "academia" at large) makes, anything smelling of that world often is dismissed without a second glance. Even when it has genuine merit. Tikhonj is right about this kind of "anti-intellectualism." But pro-intellectualism is a bias as well.