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Again, that's a personal preference, not a statement of fact. There is a cost associated with different type systems, and that cost can vary with the problem yo

by Udo 12y ago

Again, that's a personal preference, not a statement of fact. There is a cost associated with different type systems, and that cost can vary with the problem you are trying to solve. It's not that I argue against the benefits of having such a system in place, but you should be aware of the fact that this too might not represent the end-all-be-all for all programmers. One of the basic mistakes made here seems to be the notion "if programmers only _knew_ about the one true way of doing it, they'd all use the same language and tools, namely: mine".

coldtea 12y ago
Again, this is not about personal preference. In the real world, 90% of programmers use either C#, Java, C/C++, JS or Python/Ruby/Perl in their jobs. We could restrict ourselves to this set of languages and syntax style, and design a super-set language that does everything, gets rid of their historical warts, and can go from scripting to HPC. Stuff like using significant whitespace or not, are BS bikeshedding, which we can bypass. The thing is, were it matters (speed, expressivity, availability of REPL and IDE, large SDK) nothing but money prevents us from making such a language... Is there anything preventing a top notch team working for 10 years and come with one ready, including all the trims and works, JIT, AOT native compiler, ports to 2-3 architectures, batteries et al? Sure, some people would still like their Java or their Lisp or whatever. But there's not some logical impossibility preventing us from creating a language that's better for 90% of the tasks than what's our there. In a sense, that's what MS did with C# -- but they stopped too soon because they have their own agenda. So it was Windows only, in the CLR with no supported AOT option, etc.
- Udo 12y ago
  > Again, this is not about personal preference. There is no need for passive aggressiveness. I get that aping the exact phrase used in a parent comment is used to communicate disrespect, and it's duly noted, but all things being equal I would prefer not to go down that route. My argument here is that people designing languages have made choices based on their personal preference as well. It's not really appropriate to take one specific set of features you like and declare it to be the objective winner. > In the real world, 90% of programmers use either C#, Java, C/C++, JS or Python/Ruby/Perl in their jobs. That's a No True Scotsman-like argument. Also, what's the meaning of the three different types of separators you used there? But for the sake of convergence, yes, let's assume every important real-world language is in that list. I'm still not sure what to say about this without repeating myself, except for: go and do it. You say it's a matter of investment, but on the other hand consider the benefits if someone pulled it off. If you really do believe you are the person who has this all figured out, please go ahead and implement this. Heck, make it a Kickstarter project or something, I'm in!
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >There is no need for passive aggressiveness. I get that aping the exact phrase used in a parent comment is used to communicate disrespect, and it's duly noted, but all things being equal I would prefer not to go down that route. What passive aggresiveness and/or disrespect? The repeat is used to communicate disagreement with a specific thing attributed to what I said. Since it was attributed twice, with no regard to the arguments I made, it was mostly necessary. If anything is "passive agressive" is this sudden ad-hominen and armchair psychology attempt. I only responded to the abstract issue under discussion, didn't made any judgements on the participants. Can we keep it at that level?
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >My argument here is that people designing languages have made choices based on their personal preference as well. It's not really appropriate to take one specific set of features you like and declare it to be the objective winner. And my point is that I'm not doing that, I'm not picking features based on personal preference (my actual preferences are different), but to describe how a language can encompass the whole range of applications (be the right tool for most jobs, as much as possible). This wasn't about "my dream language" (that would be something like Smalltalk) but about whether a language can cover all/most bases or we're forever doomed to use a babel tower of "right tools for the right job". And the "cover all bases" thing I tried to tackle from a technical features standpoint. At this conceptual level of the argument I don't even care much if programmers will like the end result. >That's a No True Scotsman-like argument No, it's just a statistical observation. 90% of programmers do use this languages. I don't say the rest are not programmers or not true programmers -- just that we can cover the majority of programmers doing professional work with a language in that vein. >I'm still not sure what to say about this without repeating myself, except for: go and do it. You say it's a matter of investment, but on the other hand consider the benefits if someone pulled it off. If you really do believe you are the person who has this all figured out, please go ahead and implement this. Heck, make it a Kickstarter project or something, I'm in! Now, that's disrespect and passive agressiveness! I never said it's just me that "has all that figured out". In fact lots of people say the same thing, inside every language community there's a trying to fix the same pain points to make each language more universal. Lots of Python people for example wanted to make it GIL-less / capable of good async operation / faster / typed / etc. All this is for handling different kinds of scenarios that it currently does not. People using JS asked for more speed, then for server side/native interfacing (Node et co), then for "programming at large" features (ES6) etc, types, things like asm.js to get native memory management, etc. So, what I wrote was that having a language extend to almost all jobs is not impossible, and gave a laundry list of features (taken from observations such as the above), that could accomplish that.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  > So it was Windows only, in the CLR with no supported AOT option, etc. NGEN was there since day one. Spec#, Singularity systems programing language (based on C#) only has AOT compilation to native code. This work was the basis of Windows Phone 8 .NET, that only compiles to native code, in a PE format known as MDIL. This work was then continued to bring static code compilation to the Windows 8 for tablets and now for desktop store apps. It is part of the upcoming .NET 4.6. The only deployment format not supported for static code compilation are the traditional desktop and the compact framework. Parallel to this work, the Dafny the systems programming language for Ironclad,Singularity's successor, also produces static executables.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Cool, missed that NGEN was there from the start. Was mostly following Mono at the time, were the AOT option came quite later.

by Udo 12y ago

coldtea 12y ago

Again, this is not about personal preference. In the real world, 90% of programmers use either C#, Java, C/C++, JS or Python/Ruby/Perl in their jobs. We could restrict ourselves to this set of languages and syntax style, and design a super-set language that does everything, gets rid of their historical warts, and can go from scripting to HPC. Stuff like using significant whitespace or not, are BS bikeshedding, which we can bypass. The thing is, were it matters (speed, expressivity, availability of REPL and IDE, large SDK) nothing but money prevents us from making such a language... Is there anything preventing a top notch team working for 10 years and come with one ready, including all the trims and works, JIT, AOT native compiler, ports to 2-3 architectures, batteries et al? Sure, some people would still like their Java or their Lisp or whatever. But there's not some logical impossibility preventing us from creating a language that's better for 90% of the tasks than what's our there. In a sense, that's what MS did with C# -- but they stopped too soon because they have their own agenda. So it was Windows only, in the CLR with no supported AOT option, etc.

Udo 12y ago
> Again, this is not about personal preference. There is no need for passive aggressiveness. I get that aping the exact phrase used in a parent comment is used to communicate disrespect, and it's duly noted, but all things being equal I would prefer not to go down that route. My argument here is that people designing languages have made choices based on their personal preference as well. It's not really appropriate to take one specific set of features you like and declare it to be the objective winner. > In the real world, 90% of programmers use either C#, Java, C/C++, JS or Python/Ruby/Perl in their jobs. That's a No True Scotsman-like argument. Also, what's the meaning of the three different types of separators you used there? But for the sake of convergence, yes, let's assume every important real-world language is in that list. I'm still not sure what to say about this without repeating myself, except for: go and do it. You say it's a matter of investment, but on the other hand consider the benefits if someone pulled it off. If you really do believe you are the person who has this all figured out, please go ahead and implement this. Heck, make it a Kickstarter project or something, I'm in!
- coldtea 12y ago
  >There is no need for passive aggressiveness. I get that aping the exact phrase used in a parent comment is used to communicate disrespect, and it's duly noted, but all things being equal I would prefer not to go down that route. What passive aggresiveness and/or disrespect? The repeat is used to communicate disagreement with a specific thing attributed to what I said. Since it was attributed twice, with no regard to the arguments I made, it was mostly necessary. If anything is "passive agressive" is this sudden ad-hominen and armchair psychology attempt. I only responded to the abstract issue under discussion, didn't made any judgements on the participants. Can we keep it at that level?
- coldtea 12y ago
  >My argument here is that people designing languages have made choices based on their personal preference as well. It's not really appropriate to take one specific set of features you like and declare it to be the objective winner. And my point is that I'm not doing that, I'm not picking features based on personal preference (my actual preferences are different), but to describe how a language can encompass the whole range of applications (be the right tool for most jobs, as much as possible). This wasn't about "my dream language" (that would be something like Smalltalk) but about whether a language can cover all/most bases or we're forever doomed to use a babel tower of "right tools for the right job". And the "cover all bases" thing I tried to tackle from a technical features standpoint. At this conceptual level of the argument I don't even care much if programmers will like the end result. >That's a No True Scotsman-like argument No, it's just a statistical observation. 90% of programmers do use this languages. I don't say the rest are not programmers or not true programmers -- just that we can cover the majority of programmers doing professional work with a language in that vein. >I'm still not sure what to say about this without repeating myself, except for: go and do it. You say it's a matter of investment, but on the other hand consider the benefits if someone pulled it off. If you really do believe you are the person who has this all figured out, please go ahead and implement this. Heck, make it a Kickstarter project or something, I'm in! Now, that's disrespect and passive agressiveness! I never said it's just me that "has all that figured out". In fact lots of people say the same thing, inside every language community there's a trying to fix the same pain points to make each language more universal. Lots of Python people for example wanted to make it GIL-less / capable of good async operation / faster / typed / etc. All this is for handling different kinds of scenarios that it currently does not. People using JS asked for more speed, then for server side/native interfacing (Node et co), then for "programming at large" features (ES6) etc, types, things like asm.js to get native memory management, etc. So, what I wrote was that having a language extend to almost all jobs is not impossible, and gave a laundry list of features (taken from observations such as the above), that could accomplish that.
pjmlp 12y ago
> So it was Windows only, in the CLR with no supported AOT option, etc. NGEN was there since day one. Spec#, Singularity systems programing language (based on C#) only has AOT compilation to native code. This work was the basis of Windows Phone 8 .NET, that only compiles to native code, in a PE format known as MDIL. This work was then continued to bring static code compilation to the Windows 8 for tablets and now for desktop store apps. It is part of the upcoming .NET 4.6. The only deployment format not supported for static code compilation are the traditional desktop and the compact framework. Parallel to this work, the Dafny the systems programming language for Ironclad,Singularity's successor, also produces static executables.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Cool, missed that NGEN was there from the start. Was mostly following Mono at the time, were the AOT option came quite later.