5 ms·

Advanced programming languages (2009)

91 points by swah 12y ago

VectorSpace 12y ago
I am a programming newbie. We just started learning CS topics through Python. Everything was fine up until we hit "Objects and Graphics". That has to be the most inefficient and inelegant way of doing anything at all. At this point I am not even sure if I ever want to touch graphics in Python. What are some languages where dealing with graphics and objects is closer to working with purely mathematical objects rather than doing insanely tedious engineering style plug-n-chug work? Sorry, if it offends some. Didn't mean that. Thanks.
- sklogic 12y ago
  Wolfram Mathematica has a really nice model, and it's not that expensive for students.
- ryanlntn 12y ago
  Check out Elm: http://elm-lang.org/ http://elm-lang.org/
- _almosnow 12y ago
  Could you give an example of working with graphics as purely mathematical objects?
  - sklogic 12y ago
    Functional reactive animation is one such example. A constructive solid geometry used in many CADs is also pretty pure.
  - VectorSpace 12y ago
    That is the part of the point I was making. I have no idea what that would look like. Maybe something like simple proofs from Number Theory or Abstract Algebra? I read up a little on Lisp family of languages on Wiki and they look vaguely close to being 100% purely mathematical, syntax-wise. I wonder what it's like doing graphics/objects(?) work in Lisp.
    - praccu 12y ago
      It's interesting that graphics and objects are so connected, in your posts. I'll say that in general, EVERYTHING in Python is objects, and they're an extremely general programming paradigm. It sounds like Haskell might be a language you'd like, if you're into abstract algebra (although I don't think Haskell's graphics support is super great).
      - rjayatilleka 12y ago
        Bluntly put, Haskell's graphics support sucks. There are different libraries with different levels of support, but none are complete or high level. There are also Haskell like alternatives like Elm and PureScript, but they're experimental. And finally there are some Haskell to JavaScript compilers, but I'm not sure what DOM manipulation is like with them (and they're all experimental). I'm building a Haskell desktop app over winter break (DMX and light show controls), but after a fair bit of research, I came to the conclusion that its best to do the GUI in JavaScript and speak with a Haskell server over a WebSocket.
        codygman 12y ago
        For 2D, I don't see how Gloss[0] isn't complete or high level (what are you comparing it to?). There's a cool example of drawing a clock[1] as well as others[2]. The package is on hackage[3] and has a website[4], but the github seemed more approachable/clear to me. There's also an awesome tutorial on making tic tac toe[5] by ocharles of the 24 days of hackage fame. 0: https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss 1: https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss/blob/master/gloss-examples/picture/Clock/Main.hs https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss/blob/master/gloss-examples... 2: https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss/blob/master/gloss-examples https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss/blob/master/gloss-examples 3: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/gloss http://hackage.haskell.org/package/gloss 4: http://gloss.ouroborus.net/ http://gloss.ouroborus.net/ 5: https://ocharles.org.uk/blog/posts/2013-12-10-24-days-of-hackage-gloss.html https://ocharles.org.uk/blog/posts/2013-12-10-24-days-of-hac...
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- swah 12y ago
  That's odd - normally Python libraries tend to be simple to interact. I wanted to stitch a few photos on friday and used Python w/ the Pillow library, and was once again impressed for easy and pleasurable the experience was (using mostly C and Go nowadays).
- jboy 12y ago
  What sort of "graphics" are you looking for? I generally use Numpy NDarrays and Scipy's NDimage functions for graphics & image processing in Python. Aside from the NDarray data-structure itself, there's almost no O-O; everything in Numpy is either a method of this one workhorse data-type, or module-level functions that operate upon this data-type. NDarrays are great because they can represent all of: - images (using 2-D arrays for binary or greyscale images, and 3-D arrays for colour images); - the vectors & matrices used in 3-D computer graphics; - the masks used in spatial image filtering; - the "structuring elements" used in morphological image processing. Once you get used to the syntax, NDarray indexing & slicing are very efficient in both keystrokes & CPU cycles to get/set the values of pixels or arbitrary rectangular regions. NDarray methods & the related Numpy functions offer element-wise operations (like pixel-wise Boolean logical ops, or "square every element in the matrix" / "square-root every element in the matrix" as part of the Euclidean distance calculation) and operations that can run over any dimension of the image (including the colour dimension, which is useful for calculations like the N-dimensional sum in dot-products or Euclidean distance). And the for-loops are in C, so they're blindingly fast. NDimage functions provide filters and morphological processing capabilities. Plus, Numpy integrates nicely with Matplotlib so you can display images and plot histograms.
- panic 12y ago
  Processing (https://processing.org https://processing.org) is an excellent language and development environment for playing with graphics.
- ihm 12y ago
  You should definitely check out Brent Yorgey's diagrams package (see examples here http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/gallery.html http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/gallery.html) which is a declarative drawing library. Graphics are described in an essentially "mathematical" way, and as you can see, many of the examples come from mathematics.
- waps 12y ago
  Here's a hint. Write a Windows 3.1 program in C (don't worry, it runs fine in windows 8). In those programs the event loop is extremely visible, and you'll understand how everything works even in modern languages. Effectively, even things like Android and IOS still use the same basic principle, and if you dig deep enough this is exactly the structure you'll see. Plus cooperatively multitasked servers wipe the floor with almost any other kind. It's good to know how they are structured at a very low level and be able to write code to cooperate with them.
  - peterfirefly 12y ago
    The actual drawing API can also vary a lot. Cairo is quite nice and very different from Win3.1. It is more like GDI+ but nicer (and probably slower). The GUI/event handling can also be done in different ways: functional reactive programming is very different from Win3.1/X/Old-Skool Macs.
vinceguidry 12y ago
You don't have to go to a 'research' programming language to find one bursting with opportunity for enlightenment. Ruby offers a path to that just as it offers a useful career. Its object model is a sight to behold, a thing of sublime beauty. Everything that should be an object is an object, you can treat code as data almost as fluidly as you can in the homoiconic Lisp dialects. It's got the solid library support you need to code at whatever level of abstraction you're inclined to do in your domain, and the possibilities for refactoring and metaprogramming are just limitless. You don't have to compromise when you use Ruby, so long as you're not in a domain that requires cutting-edge performance, Ruby will take care of whatever it is you need to take care of while preserving the ability to abstract, redefine, and redesign. Ruby is the ultimate in object-oriented languages, every law and technique invented by greybeards in the seventies works better when done in Ruby. Lots of design patterns that require overly verbose naming and hideously unreadable and hard-to-maintain implementations in other languages have eminently readable idiomatic expressions in Ruby as well as clear paths to refactoring to them. Ruby's biggest weakness is not a Ruby weakness at all, it's the fact that gradual typing hasn't been well-defined mathematically yet enough to be able to usefully include it in Ruby. Once it has, I think Ruby will be the go-to option for just about everything save embedded applications. I can't think of anything that would make my life more awesome than being able to easily refactor to static typing.
- plinkplonk 12y ago
  "Ruby is the ultimate in object-oriented languages," There is this small thing called smalltalk. With that said, claiming Ruby is the ultimate 'enlightenment language' is a little mindboggling. I vote for javascript ;-) That said, it is a great article. Matt Might writes very well and has a lot of insight. Fwiw he doesn't include Ruby in his list of advanced languages, but does call it a 'hot' language.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    I didn't say it was the ultimate enlightenment language, I said it was the ultimate object-oriented language. There's no such thing as an ultimate approach to enlightenment. Smalltalk's nice, but Ruby's nicer. There's a reason one's more popular than the other.
segmondy 12y ago
I'm surprised Prolog is not listed there. here's a simple example, try designing a function that calculates Fibonacci two ways in your favourite language. given fib(N,X). You can supply either N, or X or neither and generate the result. ?- time(fib(N, 703303677114228158218352548771835497701812698363587327426049 050871545371181969335797422494945626117334877504492417659910 881863632654502236471060120533741212738673391111981393731255 98767690091902245245323403501)). % 44,649,335 inferences, 4.182 CPU in 4.193 seconds (100% CPU, 10676854 Lips) N = 1000 . ?- time(fib(1000, F)). % 497,690 inferences, 0.072 CPU in 0.072 seconds (100% CPU, 6935880 Lips) ...
- ctaylor001 12y ago
  Haskell - fib (Just n) Nothing = Just (fibs !! n) fib Nothing (Just x) = let (n, x') = head (filter (\(_,y) -> y >= x) (enumerate fibs)) in if x == x' then Just n else Nothing fibs = 1 : 1 : zipWith (+) fibs (tail fibs) enumerate = zip [0..] I think that should work! It's a bit undefined what happens if you supply both arguments, or neither. It would be better to use Either Integer Integer as the input instead of a pair of Maybe Integer. Of course there's always the LogicT monad if you want to do it "properly".
  - segmondy 12y ago
    the same prolog problem is defined for what happens when you supply both arguments, if the statement is true it will eval to true, if it is false, it will eval to false. if neither, it will generate all possible solutions, one at a time. :-use_module(library(clpq)). fib_aux(N, A, Sum,, F) :- { N = 0, F = 1}; { N = 1, F = 1}; { N >= 2, N1 = N - 1, Acc = Sum, NewSum = A + Sum, F = F1 + Acc, F1 >= N1 % to not run infinitly for unsatisfiable question clp_fib(N, 4). }, fib_aux(N1, Acc, NewSum, F1). fib(N, F) :- fib_aux(N, 0, 1, F).
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Prolog is quite nice, it is the next step for those that already grok functional programming.
- agumonkey 12y ago
hudibras 12y ago
FWIW, the HN title says (2009) but there's some newer material in the Scheme section at least. I think Matt updated his original blog post.
edem 12y ago
Where is clojure?
- rdc12 12y ago
  It was mentioned right at the start, the article is also from 2009 when Clojure was very new
emmanueloga_ 12y ago
I'm learning two of the five "advanced programming languages" mentioned here (Ocaml and Haskell). I started with Ocaml but these days I'm spending more time with Haskell. I find the materials and activity around Haskell to be more abundant and approachable than for Ocaml. Also, a lot of the things I learn from Haskell are transferable to coding in Ocaml. Both languages share a lot of concepts. Now that I've done some Haskell I can't believe I originally dismissed it not because of its non-strict evaluation but because of... the significative white space. Something else exciting about Haskell is all the activity around compile-to-js languages that are inspired/derived from it (and some of them are implemented in Haskell too): purescript, fay, elm, idris, and others!

91 points by swah 12y ago

I am a programming newbie. We just started learning CS topics through Python. Everything was fine up until we hit "Objects and Graphics". That has to be the most inefficient and inelegant way of doing anything at all. At this point I am not even sure if I ever want to touch graphics in Python. What are some languages where dealing with graphics and objects is closer to working with purely mathematical objects rather than doing insanely tedious engineering style plug-n-chug work? Sorry, if it offends some. Didn't mean that. Thanks.

sklogic 12y ago
Wolfram Mathematica has a really nice model, and it's not that expensive for students.
ryanlntn 12y ago
Check out Elm: http://elm-lang.org/ http://elm-lang.org/
_almosnow 12y ago
Could you give an example of working with graphics as purely mathematical objects?
- sklogic 12y ago
  Functional reactive animation is one such example. A constructive solid geometry used in many CADs is also pretty pure.
- VectorSpace 12y ago
  That is the part of the point I was making. I have no idea what that would look like. Maybe something like simple proofs from Number Theory or Abstract Algebra? I read up a little on Lisp family of languages on Wiki and they look vaguely close to being 100% purely mathematical, syntax-wise. I wonder what it's like doing graphics/objects(?) work in Lisp.
  - praccu 12y ago
    It's interesting that graphics and objects are so connected, in your posts. I'll say that in general, EVERYTHING in Python is objects, and they're an extremely general programming paradigm. It sounds like Haskell might be a language you'd like, if you're into abstract algebra (although I don't think Haskell's graphics support is super great).
    - rjayatilleka 12y ago
      Bluntly put, Haskell's graphics support sucks. There are different libraries with different levels of support, but none are complete or high level. There are also Haskell like alternatives like Elm and PureScript, but they're experimental. And finally there are some Haskell to JavaScript compilers, but I'm not sure what DOM manipulation is like with them (and they're all experimental). I'm building a Haskell desktop app over winter break (DMX and light show controls), but after a fair bit of research, I came to the conclusion that its best to do the GUI in JavaScript and speak with a Haskell server over a WebSocket.
      - codygman 12y ago
        For 2D, I don't see how Gloss[0] isn't complete or high level (what are you comparing it to?). There's a cool example of drawing a clock[1] as well as others[2]. The package is on hackage[3] and has a website[4], but the github seemed more approachable/clear to me. There's also an awesome tutorial on making tic tac toe[5] by ocharles of the 24 days of hackage fame. 0: https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss 1: https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss/blob/master/gloss-examples/picture/Clock/Main.hs https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss/blob/master/gloss-examples... 2: https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss/blob/master/gloss-examples https://github.com/benl23x5/gloss/blob/master/gloss-examples 3: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/gloss http://hackage.haskell.org/package/gloss 4: http://gloss.ouroborus.net/ http://gloss.ouroborus.net/ 5: https://ocharles.org.uk/blog/posts/2013-12-10-24-days-of-hackage-gloss.html https://ocharles.org.uk/blog/posts/2013-12-10-24-days-of-hac...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
swah 12y ago
That's odd - normally Python libraries tend to be simple to interact. I wanted to stitch a few photos on friday and used Python w/ the Pillow library, and was once again impressed for easy and pleasurable the experience was (using mostly C and Go nowadays).
jboy 12y ago
What sort of "graphics" are you looking for? I generally use Numpy NDarrays and Scipy's NDimage functions for graphics & image processing in Python. Aside from the NDarray data-structure itself, there's almost no O-O; everything in Numpy is either a method of this one workhorse data-type, or module-level functions that operate upon this data-type. NDarrays are great because they can represent all of: - images (using 2-D arrays for binary or greyscale images, and 3-D arrays for colour images); - the vectors & matrices used in 3-D computer graphics; - the masks used in spatial image filtering; - the "structuring elements" used in morphological image processing. Once you get used to the syntax, NDarray indexing & slicing are very efficient in both keystrokes & CPU cycles to get/set the values of pixels or arbitrary rectangular regions. NDarray methods & the related Numpy functions offer element-wise operations (like pixel-wise Boolean logical ops, or "square every element in the matrix" / "square-root every element in the matrix" as part of the Euclidean distance calculation) and operations that can run over any dimension of the image (including the colour dimension, which is useful for calculations like the N-dimensional sum in dot-products or Euclidean distance). And the for-loops are in C, so they're blindingly fast. NDimage functions provide filters and morphological processing capabilities. Plus, Numpy integrates nicely with Matplotlib so you can display images and plot histograms.
panic 12y ago
Processing (https://processing.org https://processing.org) is an excellent language and development environment for playing with graphics.
ihm 12y ago
You should definitely check out Brent Yorgey's diagrams package (see examples here http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/gallery.html http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/gallery.html) which is a declarative drawing library. Graphics are described in an essentially "mathematical" way, and as you can see, many of the examples come from mathematics.
waps 12y ago
Here's a hint. Write a Windows 3.1 program in C (don't worry, it runs fine in windows 8). In those programs the event loop is extremely visible, and you'll understand how everything works even in modern languages. Effectively, even things like Android and IOS still use the same basic principle, and if you dig deep enough this is exactly the structure you'll see. Plus cooperatively multitasked servers wipe the floor with almost any other kind. It's good to know how they are structured at a very low level and be able to write code to cooperate with them.
- peterfirefly 12y ago
  The actual drawing API can also vary a lot. Cairo is quite nice and very different from Win3.1. It is more like GDI+ but nicer (and probably slower). The GUI/event handling can also be done in different ways: functional reactive programming is very different from Win3.1/X/Old-Skool Macs.

vinceguidry 12y ago

You don't have to go to a 'research' programming language to find one bursting with opportunity for enlightenment. Ruby offers a path to that just as it offers a useful career. Its object model is a sight to behold, a thing of sublime beauty. Everything that should be an object is an object, you can treat code as data almost as fluidly as you can in the homoiconic Lisp dialects. It's got the solid library support you need to code at whatever level of abstraction you're inclined to do in your domain, and the possibilities for refactoring and metaprogramming are just limitless. You don't have to compromise when you use Ruby, so long as you're not in a domain that requires cutting-edge performance, Ruby will take care of whatever it is you need to take care of while preserving the ability to abstract, redefine, and redesign. Ruby is the ultimate in object-oriented languages, every law and technique invented by greybeards in the seventies works better when done in Ruby. Lots of design patterns that require overly verbose naming and hideously unreadable and hard-to-maintain implementations in other languages have eminently readable idiomatic expressions in Ruby as well as clear paths to refactoring to them. Ruby's biggest weakness is not a Ruby weakness at all, it's the fact that gradual typing hasn't been well-defined mathematically yet enough to be able to usefully include it in Ruby. Once it has, I think Ruby will be the go-to option for just about everything save embedded applications. I can't think of anything that would make my life more awesome than being able to easily refactor to static typing.

plinkplonk 12y ago
"Ruby is the ultimate in object-oriented languages," There is this small thing called smalltalk. With that said, claiming Ruby is the ultimate 'enlightenment language' is a little mindboggling. I vote for javascript ;-) That said, it is a great article. Matt Might writes very well and has a lot of insight. Fwiw he doesn't include Ruby in his list of advanced languages, but does call it a 'hot' language.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  I didn't say it was the ultimate enlightenment language, I said it was the ultimate object-oriented language. There's no such thing as an ultimate approach to enlightenment. Smalltalk's nice, but Ruby's nicer. There's a reason one's more popular than the other.

segmondy 12y ago

I'm surprised Prolog is not listed there. here's a simple example, try designing a function that calculates Fibonacci two ways in your favourite language. given fib(N,X). You can supply either N, or X or neither and generate the result. ?- time(fib(N, 703303677114228158218352548771835497701812698363587327426049 050871545371181969335797422494945626117334877504492417659910 881863632654502236471060120533741212738673391111981393731255 98767690091902245245323403501)). % 44,649,335 inferences, 4.182 CPU in 4.193 seconds (100% CPU, 10676854 Lips) N = 1000 . ?- time(fib(1000, F)). % 497,690 inferences, 0.072 CPU in 0.072 seconds (100% CPU, 6935880 Lips) ...

ctaylor001 12y ago
Haskell - fib (Just n) Nothing = Just (fibs !! n) fib Nothing (Just x) = let (n, x') = head (filter (\(_,y) -> y >= x) (enumerate fibs)) in if x == x' then Just n else Nothing fibs = 1 : 1 : zipWith (+) fibs (tail fibs) enumerate = zip [0..] I think that should work! It's a bit undefined what happens if you supply both arguments, or neither. It would be better to use Either Integer Integer as the input instead of a pair of Maybe Integer. Of course there's always the LogicT monad if you want to do it "properly".
- segmondy 12y ago
  the same prolog problem is defined for what happens when you supply both arguments, if the statement is true it will eval to true, if it is false, it will eval to false. if neither, it will generate all possible solutions, one at a time. :-use_module(library(clpq)). fib_aux(N, A, Sum,, F) :- { N = 0, F = 1}; { N = 1, F = 1}; { N >= 2, N1 = N - 1, Acc = Sum, NewSum = A + Sum, F = F1 + Acc, F1 >= N1 % to not run infinitly for unsatisfiable question clp_fib(N, 4). }, fib_aux(N1, Acc, NewSum, F1). fib(N, F) :- fib_aux(N, 0, 1, F).
pjmlp 12y ago
Prolog is quite nice, it is the next step for those that already grok functional programming.
agumonkey 12y ago

hudibras 12y ago

FWIW, the HN title says (2009) but there's some newer material in the Scheme section at least. I think Matt updated his original blog post.

edem 12y ago

Where is clojure?

rdc12 12y ago
It was mentioned right at the start, the article is also from 2009 when Clojure was very new

emmanueloga_ 12y ago

I'm learning two of the five "advanced programming languages" mentioned here (Ocaml and Haskell). I started with Ocaml but these days I'm spending more time with Haskell. I find the materials and activity around Haskell to be more abundant and approachable than for Ocaml. Also, a lot of the things I learn from Haskell are transferable to coding in Ocaml. Both languages share a lot of concepts. Now that I've done some Haskell I can't believe I originally dismissed it not because of its non-strict evaluation but because of... the significative white space. Something else exciting about Haskell is all the activity around compile-to-js languages that are inspired/derived from it (and some of them are implemented in Haskell too): purescript, fay, elm, idris, and others!