Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?

#81

Post by gnaritas » Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 8:20 AM UTC

sarmad wrote: post #76

teraflop wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the links; your language looks interesting, but could you expand a bit on what makes it a new approach? User-programmable syntax is an old idea; for instance, it's been a core feature of Scheme for 30+ years.

My language is not only about user defined syntax; it's also about user defined code generation. For example, you can define your own syntax that compiles directly into a DB stored procedure or into GPU shader, or into whatever technology that might be invented in the future, like for example quantum computing. In fact, it's less about user defined syntax than it is about user defined code generation as I am trying t…

That's what macros are in Lisp and Scheme.

Re: Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?

#82

Post by DonaldFisk » Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 9:52 AM UTC

qzxvwt wrote: post #47

mej10 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people creating multimedia works use visual programming languages that have dataflow models. Some that are fairly mature projects: vvvv - https://vvvv.org/ Puredata - https://cycling74.com/products/max/ Max MSP - https://puredata.info/

Am I wrong to think about the "graphical" aspect of visual programming languages as another layer of abstraction? If this is the case, doesn't that take some power away from these users, in the sense that their capabilities are limited to the abstractions/interface given to them by the language's developers? Not exactly trying to question whether it's a good/bad thing (as I'm aware that for many creators this might b…

It doesn't have to be just another abstraction layer. In Full Metal Jacket, there's no underlying human-readable text-based language. The abstract machine it's designed to run on is highly-concurrent (MIMD) dataflow, which is very different from the von-Neumann architecture. You can represent concurrency visually better and more clearly than textually, though a few dataflow-based textual languages exist such as SISAL.

At present, FMJ is interpreted and runs on a virtual dataflow machine. This was a necessary step to ensure the computation model was implemented accurately. Compilation to run on a single processor would actually be simplified, however: there's no parsing or dataflow analysis required. Looking into the future, the question that should really be asked is whether languages designed to run on a single processor, or to execute the same instructions in parallel (SIMD), can be easily adapted to run on MIMD architectures. Do you really want to be using MPI?

Re: Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?

#83

Post by sklogic » Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 10:06 AM UTC

My research is on hierarchies of composable domain-specific languages (see github, account 'combinatorylogic').

Re: Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?

#84

Post by erikj » Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 10:12 AM UTC

Wolfram Mathematica is a pretty old project, did it change much over the last five years?

Re: Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?

#85

Post by DonaldFisk » Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 10:14 AM UTC

mej10 wrote: post #60

qzxvwt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I wrong to think about the "graphical" aspect of visual programming languages as another layer of abstraction? If this is the case, doesn't that take some power away from these users, in the sense that their capabilities are limited to the abstractions/interface given to them by the language's developers? Not exactly trying to question whether it's a good/bad thing (as I'm aware that for many creators this might b…

I have done some programming in these and they are definitely more suited to the applications that their creators had in mind. I wouldn't want to do general purpose programming in them -- at least as they exist currently.

Full Metal Jacket is general-purpose. Doing general-purpose programming in it does, however, has required me to think very differently. At present, it's still easier for me to program in Lisp, but that's mostly down to being a very experienced Lisp programmer and a rookie FMJ programmer. Initial difficulties are inevitable when you learn a new programming language different from the languages you already know. I had similar issues with Prolog but mastered that.

Different general-purpose languages are better adapted to different programming tasks, however, and Full Metal Jacket may in time find its niche. I wouldn't write a neural network in Prolog, or an expert system in C, for example.

Re: Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?

#86

Post by jonbaer » Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 10:17 AM UTC

Social Machines by Mark Stahl ... https://github.com/socialmachines

Re: Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?

#87

Post by hendekagon » Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 10:21 AM UTC

marknadal wrote: post #74

I think "visual" programming is the incorrect approach, something I would like to see more of is "tactile-spatial" programming. Anybody have an example of these? Most work I've seen is visual/flowchart which is not optimal for touch devices or large projects.

This is what I'd like to see too. Let's get away from tiny motions and sitting in a chair and make tools more like traditional wood/metalworking tools for programming: benches with robotic appendages that we can manipulate ASTs with. Let's use our kinesthetic and touch senses more.

Re: Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?

#88

Post by borplk » Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 10:35 AM UTC

DonaldFisk wrote: post #21

Me. I'm working on Full Metal Jacket, a strongly-typed, visual, pure dataflow language ( http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/fmj/FMJ.html ) with its own IDE. Things have advanced a fair bit since I wrote those pages, and published the recent paper, so I'll add to the tutorials very soon, and announce this in Hacker News. Type definition, macros, and a few other things have been added to the language. .303 shared-source rele…

Hat off to you, very interesting. Keep up the great work.

Re: Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?

#89

Post by exDM69 » Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 10:44 AM UTC

erikj wrote: post #84

Wolfram Mathematica is a pretty old project, did it change much over the last five years?

The Wolfram language has been promoted a lot recently. They're moving from a computer algebra system to a more general purpose programming environment for scientific applications. There's neat new things like easier GUI features.