8 ms·

This is either a very elaborate joke or the future of computing.

by pxndx 12y ago

johnloeber 12y ago
I can't tell what this is, but it looks very impressive.
weinzierl 12y ago
I think it's neither, it's an interesting experiment.
jeremyrwelch 12y ago
It's both.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
gfodor 12y ago
They had me going in the Nock spec until "We should note that in Nock and Hoon, 0 (pronounced "yes") is true, and 1 ("no") is false. Why? It's fresh, it's different, it's new. And it's annoying. And it keeps you on your toes. And it's also just intuitively right."
- pavlov 12y ago
  The same spirit seems to apply everywhere. The Hoon tutorial shows an incredibly elaborate way to build a decrement function, and it notes: "As you may remember, to decrement 'a' we need to count up to it."
  - tel 12y ago
    That's completely standard for Peano arithmetic though.
- callahad 12y ago
  To be fair, that's also pretty close to exit code semantics on most POSIX systems, where 0 is success and non-zero is failure...
  - 542458 12y ago
    But on POSIX systems, there's a reason for that. There's only one success (Since "success" should do the same thing every time), but many types of errors which can be indicated by the return value. You could argue that 1 should be success, and >1 should be failure, but that's a minor quibble. Conversely, here it's just because "it's different". I feel that this is a bit if a shame - some of the other parts of the project appear quite interesting, but making fundamental decisions in downright wrong ways just to mess with expectations comes across as silly to say the least. Why deliberately increase the learning barrier and drive people away?
    - urbit 12y ago
      Yeah, it's probably not one of our better decisions.
- gojomo 12y ago
  Here's one possible intuition: There is one ground truth, origin, fixed point like the North Star: zero. There are an infinite number of possible falsehoods: all nonzero numbers. But Urbit chooses 1 as the canonical false.
  - randallsquared 12y ago
    Whoa. That does make it intuitive. :)
  - vidarh 12y ago
    And this is close to the reason why you often see zero used a "success" in languages like C: There are many possible error values. So it's not very original at all.
    - urbit 12y ago
      That's correct. :-)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - gfodor 12y ago
    this is that point where i get frustrated i can't post animated head-explode.gif's in HN.
- krick 12y ago
  I absolutely understand your reaction, but, believe me or not, I remember myself wondering as a child why it is opposite. That time it seemed to me completely intuitive and natural that 1 should be "false" and 0 — "true". However, years later I was introduced to boolean algebra, where 1 should be true and 0 — false, if we want multiplication to be "and" and addition "or". And it feels right, because intersection of two sets is (intuitively) multiplication, and joining — addition. So, yeah, it doesn't seem like a good idea to me as well after all these years.
  - Adlai 12y ago
    Why is set intersection intuitively multiplication? My expectation is that a set multiplication would give me a new set consisting of all pairs consisting of a single element from each set.
    - krick 12y ago
      Compare to probability. Probability of element being in one set AND another distinct set is multiplication of two probabilities (which are, in reality, actually defined by sets). "Pairs" (and, respectively, cartesian product) is a bit more complex, and not so much related to boolean algebra deduction concept.
    - grayclhn 12y ago
      x ∈ (A ∩ B) = (x ∈ A) * (x ∈ B) if "x ∈ A" equals 1 when x is in the set A, 0 when x is not in the set A. Using "indicator functions" like this also gives you a nice formulation for probability and integration, etc. that falls apart if you use 1 to represent x ∉ A. edit: I should add that I'm not claiming "you can't build measure theoretic probability from this formulation of booleans" is a strike against the project. Just addressing the math question.
      - shkkmo 12y ago
        I don't see how you lose boolean algebra, you just need to flip * and + in your equations. x ∈ (A ∩ B) = (x ∈ A) + (x ∈ B) (and) x ∈ (A ∪ B) = (x ∈ A) * (x ∈ B) (or)
- javaexpert101 12y ago
  And it also doesn't matter one bit, because they are `%.y` and `%.n` for all practical purposes.

This is either a very elaborate joke or the future of computing.

by pxndx 12y ago

This is either a very elaborate joke or the future of computing.

johnloeber 12y ago

I can't tell what this is, but it looks very impressive.

weinzierl 12y ago

I think it's neither, it's an interesting experiment.

jeremyrwelch 12y ago

It's both.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

gfodor 12y ago

They had me going in the Nock spec until "We should note that in Nock and Hoon, 0 (pronounced "yes") is true, and 1 ("no") is false. Why? It's fresh, it's different, it's new. And it's annoying. And it keeps you on your toes. And it's also just intuitively right."

pavlov 12y ago
The same spirit seems to apply everywhere. The Hoon tutorial shows an incredibly elaborate way to build a decrement function, and it notes: "As you may remember, to decrement 'a' we need to count up to it."
- tel 12y ago
  That's completely standard for Peano arithmetic though.
callahad 12y ago
To be fair, that's also pretty close to exit code semantics on most POSIX systems, where 0 is success and non-zero is failure...
- 542458 12y ago
  But on POSIX systems, there's a reason for that. There's only one success (Since "success" should do the same thing every time), but many types of errors which can be indicated by the return value. You could argue that 1 should be success, and >1 should be failure, but that's a minor quibble. Conversely, here it's just because "it's different". I feel that this is a bit if a shame - some of the other parts of the project appear quite interesting, but making fundamental decisions in downright wrong ways just to mess with expectations comes across as silly to say the least. Why deliberately increase the learning barrier and drive people away?
  - urbit 12y ago
    Yeah, it's probably not one of our better decisions.
gojomo 12y ago
Here's one possible intuition: There is one ground truth, origin, fixed point like the North Star: zero. There are an infinite number of possible falsehoods: all nonzero numbers. But Urbit chooses 1 as the canonical false.
- randallsquared 12y ago
  Whoa. That does make it intuitive. :)
- vidarh 12y ago
  And this is close to the reason why you often see zero used a "success" in languages like C: There are many possible error values. So it's not very original at all.
  - urbit 12y ago
    That's correct. :-)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- gfodor 12y ago
  this is that point where i get frustrated i can't post animated head-explode.gif's in HN.
krick 12y ago
I absolutely understand your reaction, but, believe me or not, I remember myself wondering as a child why it is opposite. That time it seemed to me completely intuitive and natural that 1 should be "false" and 0 — "true". However, years later I was introduced to boolean algebra, where 1 should be true and 0 — false, if we want multiplication to be "and" and addition "or". And it feels right, because intersection of two sets is (intuitively) multiplication, and joining — addition. So, yeah, it doesn't seem like a good idea to me as well after all these years.
- Adlai 12y ago
  Why is set intersection intuitively multiplication? My expectation is that a set multiplication would give me a new set consisting of all pairs consisting of a single element from each set.
  - krick 12y ago
    Compare to probability. Probability of element being in one set AND another distinct set is multiplication of two probabilities (which are, in reality, actually defined by sets). "Pairs" (and, respectively, cartesian product) is a bit more complex, and not so much related to boolean algebra deduction concept.
  - grayclhn 12y ago
    x ∈ (A ∩ B) = (x ∈ A) * (x ∈ B) if "x ∈ A" equals 1 when x is in the set A, 0 when x is not in the set A. Using "indicator functions" like this also gives you a nice formulation for probability and integration, etc. that falls apart if you use 1 to represent x ∉ A. edit: I should add that I'm not claiming "you can't build measure theoretic probability from this formulation of booleans" is a strike against the project. Just addressing the math question.
    - shkkmo 12y ago
      I don't see how you lose boolean algebra, you just need to flip * and + in your equations. x ∈ (A ∩ B) = (x ∈ A) + (x ∈ B) (and) x ∈ (A ∪ B) = (x ∈ A) * (x ∈ B) (or)
javaexpert101 12y ago
And it also doesn't matter one bit, because they are `%.y` and `%.n` for all practical purposes.