shalabhc

17 ms·

121.
by shalabhc 9y ago
For language enthusiasts, here are some interesting features of Red (and Rebol): - You can pass unevaluated expressions to functions, which can then choose to evaluate the expressions any way they want. This sounds similar to 'fexprs&#
122.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Oh I think I see what you mean. The specific scenario is: 1. External actor A1 sends a request t1 to Spanner 2. Spanner responds with a message m1 confirming t1 is committed 3. Based on receiving m1 , A1 sends a private message to external
123.
by shalabhc 9y ago
You can make time-oriented queries on snapshots using pseudo-time as well - given that all transactions are ordered. Timestamps are roughly ordered by real time, because NTP will synchronize to a few ms accuracy. IIUC within the margin of
124.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Thanks for the details! BTW, this sounds similar to the pseudotime ideas from David Reed ( http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.126... ), where you 'compute' a transaction timestamp and use
125.
by shalabhc 9y ago
> Spanner’s external consistency invariant is that for any two transactions, T1 and T2 (even if on opposite sides of the globe):if T2 starts to commit after T1 finishes committing, then the timestamp for T2 is greater than the timestamp
126.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Yes the analogy to an OS is good. Many language comparisons sadly miss this because they just look at Smalltalk through a 'programming language' lens and only see at a slice of the Smalltalk system. Interestingly there is an Pharo
127.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Another interesting protocol, perhaps underused, is SCTP. It fixes many issues with TCP, in particular it has reliable datagrams with multiplexing and avoiding head-of-line blocking. I believe QUIC is supposed to be faster at connection (re
128.
by shalabhc 9y ago
The article itself might be a fluff piece, but Smalltalk is a worthwhile investment of time anyway. I believe I grasped the more interesting ideas in Smalltalk when I approached it not as just another programming 'language', but r
129.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Related ideas exist in David Reed's 'Atomic Actions' which use pseudotime: http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~vaughan/teaching/431/papers/reed83.pdf : "thinking about objects as sequences of unchan
130.
by shalabhc 9y ago
You can buy the future in hardware - assuming you have a design. Given you can already buy compute power over the cloud today, 'buying hardware from the future' could perhaps mean a different architecture than just 'a large n
131.
by shalabhc 9y ago
My interest in this is atm is research oriented. I do feel LASP is a great project and I'd like to see more work in this area because I believe there is a general lack of distributed programming systems which abstract away an entire ne
132.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Another option is gitter.im, which links to your github project and doesn't have to be invite only.
133.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Very interesting - LASP looks like it is based on CRDTs, which I understand work by attaching location and time metadata to the data operations (add/remove) and then being able to merge history consistently. Is there more work that gen
134.
by shalabhc 9y ago
SQLite is great. For an unusual application see actordb.com - a server side database that uses a large number of independent SQLite databases.
135.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Yes, somewhat like these, but having the ability to inspect and simulate effects on intermediate forms and systems. So something along the lines of light table but being able to show more than just the immediate program. Copying something I
136.
by shalabhc 9y ago
> You could think of an interpreter for a statically-typed language running various processes as the same program, but we still say the language is statically typed. Is it statically typed for cross process messages though?
137.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Ah I see. So with 'sealed' you mean things like reproducible builds and being able to determine the exact set of sources, etc? The containerization movement is interesting - while having these 'sealed' virtual environmen
138.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Agree on the benefits of IDEs and REPLs. An IDE/language with integrated notebook-style REPLs might be useful too. Maybe you want to create parts of the system by interacting with a REPL (instead of writing a static block of text) - an
139.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Wow this is pretty impressive! Python everywhere is a big advantage and the way the frontend, backend and database are integrated appears quite seamless. My question is about scaling - what are some large apps on this platform and how big d
140.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Do you see this as a useful dichotomy? In reality no system is truly sealed - it's just temporarily sealed between evolution steps, no?
141.
by shalabhc 9y ago
The point is trust and typing seem orthogonal. E.g. I use static typing within one 'program' but 'dynamic' as soon as I split my program into two, even when the level of trust didn't change. Same thing when includin
142.
by shalabhc 9y ago
I think sparkie has a very valid point. It has to do with Unix because a 'program' in Unix has specific meaning (and Windows is no different in this regard, btw). A Unix program doesn't map exactly to what a program means in
143.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Fundamental ideas about computability include the model of the Turing machine, which has no notion of types, verification, or even functions whatsoever - there are just too many degrees of freedom. I agree there are correctness properties w
144.
by shalabhc 9y ago
> As for why we switch to dynamic typing as we scale up, some of it probably has to do with trust. I'll note that we switch to 'dynamic' much before the question of trust arises. Whenever you do IPC between two OS processe
145.
by shalabhc 9y ago
> It emerges from the underlying mathematics. Which mathematics? (Lisp has its own math, for instance.)
146.
by shalabhc 9y ago
> more rigorously enforced at compile time 'Compile time', like everything in the artificial science of computing, is a made up thing. We might reconsider if it's a useful idea to keep. Why must there be a specific point i
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Alan Kay elaborates on what's good about Lisp(quora.com)
4 points by shalabhc 9y ago|0 comments
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The Neko Programming Language(nekovm.org)
2 points by shalabhc 9y ago|0 comments
149.
by shalabhc 9y ago
> books (text) are still the main medium Geometry books don't use text as the only form of communication. Neither do books about architecture, mechanical engineering, anatomy, circuit design, etc. Imagine a world where you used onl
150.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Excellent points! > I've yet to encounter a more precise and usable input mechanism than the keyboard. > You can also imagine more effort into displaying code in a less textual manner, even if the keyboard remains the primary inp

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