3 ms·
s/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
by urbit 13y ago
s/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.