7 ms·
Scheme to become two languages
- andreyf 17y agoHow can anyone think that deciding on expressions of computation should be done by committee? Imagine mathematicians were to get together to agree on standardized terminology for papers - what a waste of time it would be!
- thunk 17y agoAssuming you're not being facetious, I happen to think mathematics would be more advanced today if a little attention was paid to standardizing its notation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=733265 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=733265 But don't take that as enthusiasm for committees.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoAlmost no one is enthusiastic about committees. That doesn't make them any less of a necessary evil.
- sandGorgon 17y ago'''I happen to think mathematics would be more advanced today if a little attention was paid to standardizing its notation''' ... as well as the tools available to render those notations. http://www.stixfonts.org/pub_geninfo.html http://www.stixfonts.org/pub_geninfo.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIX_Fonts_project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIX_Fonts_project
- marcusbooster 17y agoIt seemed to work fine for Haskell.
- viraptor 17y agoReally? There are still people who want a rewrite of Haskell's number types to organise it better (numeric prelude). Mainly for stuff like types that implement addition, but multiplication doesn't work for them. And one would think that implementing math is easy ;)
- drobilla 17y agoThat is exactly why one of the goals needs to be a small, understandable, core. Committees degrade into uselessness when the discussion degrades into warring over features. Everyone has a pet feature, and nobody lets their pet feature go. When you have a stated goal of minimalism (for at least part of the greater thing you're trying to define), then the argument to include this or that can be a /logical/ one based on whether it is actually /required/.
- jknupp 17y agoActually, it's not being split at all. There's going to be a "small" variant that is a proper subset of the "large", or complete variant. Small would just be a reduced feature set.
- Tichy 17y agoWhy do languages always have to evolve? On average, do languages get better over time or do they deteriorate? I am sure that Java has deteriorated a lot. Keep it simple, please!
- noss 17y agoYes, things used to be better. It's the decay of the youth.
- Tichy 17y agoNo, but maybe featuritis is how languages die, to be replaced by newer, simpler languages.
- apotheon 17y agoSometimes, the newer, simpler languages are new versions of the older, more byzantine languages. I think that's basically the Perl 6 approach, for instance. It's called "evolution", in some circles.
- maxwell 17y agoIt's like sketching with pencil. Your first version is complicated and gets a lot wrong, with stray lines all about. The final one is cleaned up and simple, yet that simplicity is a direct result of that messy progenitor.
- maxwell 17y agoSimplicity of use is what seems important, not necessarily simplicity of design. Though JavaScript is more complicated than C in the sense of having more features, those features generally result in source files that're more succinct and faster to write (since you don't have to, say, roll your own hashtables).
- mrshoe 17y agos/languages/software/g
- polos 17y agoWe already have both Theory Focused Lisp (Scheme) and Practice Focused Lisp (CL). What did I (sorry, I meant you :) miss?
- herdrick 17y agoThe idea is that Scheme has been controlled by the expansionists lately and has gotten pretty large and practical. As for why people don't just use CL, Scheme isn't laden with the historical mistakes that Common Lisp is, Scheme is still capable of evolving, and "large Scheme" is much more approachable to beginners than CL because of DrScheme and other efforts of the PLT people. And some people just like Scheme's approach better.
- polos 17y agohistorical mistakes (regarding CL) is only an opinion, not a fact. For many aspects it's a huge advantage of CL to not having continuously evolve into something slightly different and only opinionatedly better. I know both Scheme and CL, and I'll continue to prefer CL for at least the next decade coming, I think. Meantime, I like all the effort anybody is putting in any kind of Lisp, and I always follow the different attempts (the different Schemes, Arc, Clojure).
- herdrick 17y agoNo I think Common Lisp does have more mistakes than Scheme. But I should have said, "Scheme isn't as laden with mistakes..." And that's partly because most of the current Scheme standard was evolved after the Common Lisp standard was set. Agreed on your last point, and I recommend trying Clojure out for some little project. It might surprise you how much more succinct it is than Common Lisp. Arc too, from what I've heard.
- icey 17y agoYou missed this paren: )
- apotheon 17y agoThis kinda looks like a linkjacked version of that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777666 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777666
- silentbicycle 17y agoIt's on Lambda the Ultimate, which is a well-known programming language theory discussion site. While the link could have been to the steering committee statement, the signal-to-noise ratio for LtU's discussion will probably be on par with HN's. It's worth browsing their archives (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/classic/lambda-archive1.html http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/classic/lambda-archive1.html) sometime, when you have a couple hours. Great stuff. (I'm only posting the link because it's a Friday afternoon. ;) )
- apotheon 17y agoOh, I read stuff there from time to time, and it's often interesting. I just didn't see anything in the original posting at LtU that made me think "Yes, it was definitely important to submit this instead of the actual meat of the matter."
- apgwoz 17y agoI linked to it specifically for the discussion that LtU has on the matter.
- apotheon 17y agoFair 'nuff. Upvoted. I just don't usually like to read discussion in two separate places of the same topic. It gets tedious. I guess it's a matter of personal taste.
- apgwoz 17y agoOrdinarily I'd agree with you. However, this is a case where the insights of a more specialized community on programming languages makes sense.
- cesare 17y agoThis is a great idea. To keep a standard subset for lightweight implementations (which are better suited for embedded systems, or for being embedded as a scripting language). How cool is this? Edit: not to mention that a greater portability among the full featured implementations would be even more cool. I'm so happy to see Scheme alive and kicking.
- runinit 17y agoI'm currently planning out a project that involves building a OSC controller using an ARM chip. I hope I will be able to use scheme to write the firmware for the device, that would be swell (and much more fun than using ASM).
- kragen 17y agoHow do you like Lua?
- runinit 17y agoI have very little experience programming so i figured an embedded system would give me a good "ground up" approach to learning some programming. I've heard good things about lua, i was considering ADA (rock solid stability is key for this project) or smalltalk. I'm still in the planning stages of everything involving this project and infact i'm going to build a midibox first to get familiar with embedded systems and circuit design. Some people have made some impressive controllers, and synths with the project. http://www.midibox.org/ http://www.midibox.org/ http://www.ucapps.de/ http://www.ucapps.de/
- kragen 17y agoOh, well, you should try some stuff before you make up your mind, then. Ada and Smalltalk couldn't be much more different.
- MaysonL 17y agoCheck out this: http://arcfn.com/2009/08/arc-arduino-arm-temperature-monitoring.html http://arcfn.com/2009/08/arc-arduino-arm-temperature-monitor... The guy is running an Arc (pg's Lisp, currently implemented in mzscheme) web server on his Arm-based SheevaPlug.