bjz_

20 ms·

1. 151.▲
   by bjz_ 9y ago

   Yeah - it's really inspiring to see the grit and determination poured in over many years starting to pay off. Truly great software engineering happening over at Mozilla!
2. 152.▲
   by bjz_ 9y ago

   I dunno, it's actually exciting imo. Means we've got more speed to see yet from Rust! :)
3. 153.▲
   by bjz_ 9y ago

   No, not if your language has totality checking like Idris, Agda, Lean, etc. Granted, it can sometimes be finicky to prove totality - the type checker naturally has to be a little conservative due to the impossibility of solving the halting
4. 154.▲
   by bjz_ 9y ago

   https://rust.godbolt.org/ is good for playing around with this stuff: https://godbolt.org/g/9TgVXg
5. 155.▲
   by bjz_ 9y ago

   Did you try the nightly or Beta version? If not, you weren't experiencing the new changes. These will drop on the stable channel within the next day or so.
6. 156.▲
   by bjz_ 9y ago

   Yeah, same in the C++ world with templates. They're just so handy, especially when you want performance! Thankfully C++'s `constexpr` has made this kind of thing much more tenable from a library consumer's perspective, and Ru
7. 157.▲
   by bjz_ 9y ago

   Not really. Haskell has support for higher kinded types that allow it to support lenses, which are a powerful way of declaratively traversing through data structures, so perhaps that's what you mean. On the other hand Haskell's re
8. 158.▲
   by bjz_ 9y ago

   Much of nalgebra's woes come from it trying to be n-dimensional without support for constants-in generics yet (this is in the works). To do this it does crazy wizardy using traits to model numbers at compile time. It's impressive
9. 159.▲
   by bjz_ 9y ago

   And in SML tuples are just records with numeric fields in a special order. Enter this in the repl: { 1 = "hi", 2 = "howdy" }; And get: val it = ("hi","howdy") : string * string
10. 160.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    Thankfully Quantum is silky smooth (been using it on the Nightlies and now the web developer edition).
11. 161.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    Still no types in Elixir land, nor control over effects. Dialyzer was a real disappointment with its performance, poor error messages, lack of ecosystem support, lack of parametric polymorphism, and it not reporting obvious type errors. Rea
12. 162.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    Testing attempts to pin down specific use cases to ensure that they meet certain requirements. Alas they only single out one case at a time - there could be a wide range of possible failure conditions you forgot to test. Types allow you to
13. 163.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    This need not be the case forever. It's still an open problem, but the tooling is getting better all the time! For now types+tests are a happy medium. No need to throw the baby out with the water just because 100% correctness is still
14. 164.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    Go is a terrible example of a statically typed language. Now that is an example of a bunch of people not learning from the past - ie. the entire lineage of ML-based languages! A rich type system lets you mold and shape the types to fit nice
15. 165.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    The difference is that we know there's something better than Java, C#, or C++ this time around. We have Typescript, Flow, Elm, Purescript, Haskell, Rust, OCaml, Idris, F*, Nim, Crystal, and more. Yes, some lessons have been forgotten t
16. 166.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    > Any language can have technical debt, dangling pointers and so on Any language can have tech debt, but I want access to tools in order to help me refactor my way out of that. Working with Ruby feels like building on a foundation of san
17. 167.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    I'm one of the new generation of devs to have come into the startup world in Melbourne after Ruby stole its heart, and damn is it a mess and a maintenance nightmare. So many production bugs due to nil pointers, missing methods, etc, an
18. 168.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    The combination of the lack of a type system and magical metaprogramming that relies on mutating classes at runtime leads to maintenance nightmares. Probably one of the more frustrating languages I've used.
19. 169.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    > If you've spent a significant amount of time with such proof assistants, you'd see that the proof search is rather pitiful. Afaik, Idris' proof search was hacked together in an afternoon just to see if it would work. And
20. 170.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    Yeah, definitely agree that there are trade-offs with currying when mapping it to a compilation target like JS, and I am consistently impressed by Bucklescipt's ability to convert the curried versions of functions to regular JS calls.
21. 171.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    Elixir doesn't really push much of the state of the art forward. It's pretty much Erlang with new clothes (and some nice cleanups). I worked with it for over a year and while I loved the 'fail fast' model of programming,
22. 172.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    Programming in Lean, Agda, and Idris have been quite a revelation in terms of interactive type system exploration. Granted, they can be flakey at times (Lean especially), but it's a tantalizing glimpse at what could be around the corne
23. 173.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    I was referring to chenglou's comment[1] where he said "It also prevents some optimizations and new type features." [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15573956
24. 174.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    Good points. Still weird to have a syntax that is at odds with the underlying semantics, and hopefully it doesn't sow more confusion than it initially solves in the long term. I still can't get my head around why it would be an op
25. 175.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    I'm not talking about you not knowing, I'm more worried about language designers talking down to programmers for short term gains, rather than trying to raise them up with tools that will benefit them in the long term. Interesting
26. 176.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    Oh, this is great: https://github.com/purescript/psc-package Any word of when this will be supported/promoted officially? Just got this response from one of my former JS colleagues: https://twitter.com&
27. 177.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    I'm guessing it's blocked on OCaml. I'm excited about modular implicits, but it's the same story there...
28. 178.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    But the syntax adds a layer of obfuscation over the mechanics of currying. I thought we were getting somewhere with Elm, Purescript, and Reason adopting it and making it more widely known, but then we've gone a step backward again. I k
29. 179.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    When is Purescript going to get rid of the need for Bower? That's a pretty significant turn-off for most folks :(
30. 180.▲
    by bjz_ 9y ago

    I prefer RAML tbh - using Markdown as the basis of an API specification language is a pretty terrible idea. RAML's syntax is much more structured and pleasant, and the type syntax is far nicer to write than JSON Schema. Alas it seems t