What Urbit is • Hacker News Board

Re: What Urbit is

#181

Post by lisper » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 5:22 AM UTC

yarvin9 wrote: post #171

lisper wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hello! I'm one of the Urbit devs. Can you please explain to me what a "non-lambda interpreter" is and why it matters?

It's an axiomatic interpreter not based on the lambda calculus. It matters because gensyms suck. More generally, if you are building a two-layered system in which a compiler targets the interpreter, symbols, functions, and scopes are concepts that belong in the high-level language, not the low-level interpreter. (I think Shen is one example of a typed Lisp that targets an untyped Lisp, but obviously I know nothing ab…

> not based on the lambda calculus

> It matters because gensyms suck.

That makes no sense. The lambda calculus has nothing to do with symbols. Lisp introduced the concept of symbols, but Lisp and the Lambda Calculus are not the same thing.

> obviously I know nothing about Lisp

That is indeed becoming rather obvious.

Re: What Urbit is

#182

Post by yarvin9 » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 5:22 AM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #176

yarvin9 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoon is mainly built on a fixed set of hardwired, built-in macros. This is how I can be so confident about not needing anything like gensyms (what eliminates gensyms is having a subject which is navigated geometrically, not symbolically). The advantage of fixing the set of hardwired macros is that, when reading code, everyone knows exactly what every line is doing, without having to indirect through the local macro e…

> everyone knows exactly what every line is doing At least, until you start to define functions, whereby a line now says "something happens according to a definition elsewhere which is just invoked here". Oh wait, that's also what a piece of syntax or macro also says, pretty much. > I hope you can see the UI advantage to functional programming in an environment of controlled evaluation complexity What I do know is th…

The difference between a language with symbolic names, and a language with names and macros, is a difference between one level of indirection, and two levels of indirection. My view is that one is hard enough.

Macros aren't functions. A function call is one thing. A macro can expand to arbitrary code. This code may contain function calls or other symbols.

Before you can even interpret these symbols, you have to expand the macros in your head. This is two steps, rather than one. Expanding is not tracing. This extra step is why whoever is reading your code is so easily tempted to give up and writes it again herself, with her own macro language.

I was not comparing FP to C. If you look at actual Hoon code, it's pretty comparable in size to other functional languages, and also in clarity once you learn to read it. Obviously C is much fatter and harder to understand (and has macros, of course).

Re: What Urbit is

#183

Post by yarvin9 » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #37

adbge wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "leader" is an avowed racist and nasty person in general. Oh, good. This again. Curtis has stated publicly, "I am not an 'outspoken advocate for slavery,' a racist, a sexist or a fascist." See: https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam...

"I'm not racist, but..."

"I'm not a communist, but..."

Re: What Urbit is

#184

Post by state » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 5:26 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #167

state wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had this argument in person! Or, at least we had a good chunk of it. It was cut short, and I think it's my fault for not re-initiating it. As you may remember, I'm really not the person to answer that question sufficiently. But I would like to see you and Curtis have this out at greater length.

> We had this argument in person! Sorry, I didn't recognize your handle. (And just for the record, I wasn't trying to start an argument, just asking a question.) > it's my fault OK ;-) > I'm really not the person to answer that question sufficiently. OK. > But I would like to see you and Curtis have this out at greater length. Well, we're already having something out in another branch of this thread ( https://news.yc…

> Sorry, I didn't recognize your handle.

No problem. Just, you know, hi! I'm actually happy to pick this thread up. I remember really enjoying the last discussion.

As (I think) we discussed last time I basically have two views:

- Urbit actually works. Like, I actually build stuff on top of it. That's really the layer I'm most interested in. If it were built in Lisp, well, I probably wouldn't know the difference. I'm not sure I'm able to understand the implicit criticism at the user level.

- Shaking off the cruft of existing systems is actually pretty hard. I don't have as much experience with this as a programmer as Curtis does, but it's a problem near and dear to me. It's very difficult to think clearly inside of someone else's intellectual framework. So, maybe Hoon looks like a bad Lisp variant today. What does it look like in 50 years? Maybe it's dead, maybe it's everywhere. I'm not sure we can actually make this judgement for certain. That is: whether Nock / Hoon is definitively better or worse in terms of its long-term adoption and performance.

What Nock does seem to unlock is incredible amount of enthusiasm. The feeling of disillusionment can easily be converted into excitement. I've seen this done by Urbit — and that's pretty difficult to do. My intuition is that Lisp suffers from the opposite: the feeling that breaking from its history is impossible.

Either way I'm serious about getting you two to have this out in some kind of organized way. Ideally, on Urbit somehow.

Re: What Urbit is

#185

Post by kaid » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 5:30 AM UTC

zardgiv wrote: post #96

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The norm of shunning people for having ideas you disagree with would result in the collapse of society.

This is absolutely silly. Just to take it to absurdity, and I'm not claiming Moldbug is a member of the Nazi party, but society would not collapse if we shunned people who espoused, for example, the ideals of Hitler and the Nazi party.

The shunning policy had done quite contrary consequences. The Lambdaconf campaign drew a lot of attention to the very person they want to no-platform, more and more people begin to search the identity Curtis Yarvin/Moldbug, even come to read his articles and try to interpret his ideologies, no matter whether they gonna protest or support.

P.S. the nazi party was a frequent practitioner of this shunning policy.

Re: What Urbit is

#186

Post by lisper » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 5:36 AM UTC

yarvin9 wrote: post #168

lisper wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language. That seems like a peculiar position to take in light of your self-avowed and (apparently) carefully cultivated ignorance of Lisp. If you don't know Lisp, how would you know if it's typed or not? BTW, here's a clue. (Spoiler alert! You may learn something about Lisp by reading the following.): Welcome to Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.10-r1…

Actually, if you watch the video of the LambdaConf talk, I believe you'll see me deride Lisp as having (and needing) dynamically typed atoms. I had no idea the concept of an atom had indeed degenerated all the way into complex numbers, which to me and to all decent Americans will always be a "cons" cell. Obviously I had not reckoned with the full and complete degeneracy of Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.10. Or somethi…

> A "dynamic" type system isn't actually a type system.

I didn't say it was. I said Lisp was a typed language. Different claim. Lisp can be either dynamically or statically typed, though dynamic typing is more common. See:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3323549/is-a-statically-t...

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Lisp-dynamically-typed

But see my earlier warnings about the possibility of losing your carefully cultivated ignorance.

If you really want to play with fire, read these too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_system

http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2010/08/what-to-know-before...

Pay particular attention where it says, "Type systems are commonly classified by several words, of which the most common are ... dynamic ..."

Re: What Urbit is

#187

Post by mixedCase » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 5:53 AM UTC

ksrm wrote: post #141

5F36B5F62640 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments that I have seen from him on that topic (and it should be noted that I have only read a small part of his comments so this may not be representative of his thoughts on these matters) implied that those groups were better slaves because they were more resilient or stronger, so were able to better survive slavery than less resilient or weaker groups. I don't see why that would make people from those groups…

Do you seriously not see how someone discussing how good a slave you would make is (at the very least) 'unwelcoming'?

Was that on Urbit's homepage? The docs? The IRC? The subreddit? Over e-mail?

Was it something like "yeah it is a functional system... hey have I mentioned how much potential you have for whenever you feel like dedicating your life to slavery?"

...or was it just the guy rambling on a blog of his under a pen name?

It's pretty obvious to anyone that the guy's views are obscenely offensive, but if the guy is strictly professional when it comes to Urbit, treats everyone with the same respect and works just fine along with many people that despise his views, how are the project's goals tainted?

Re: What Urbit is

#188

Post by Animats » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 6:00 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #163

dreamdu5t wrote: post #140

This is the most interesting and important project since the WWW.

Or maybe even the most interesting and important project since Xanadu.

It has the cult-like approach of Xanadu - use new terminology, tie it to an economic model, and re-invent everything. Also, there seems to be a cult leader.

Jargon: noun (data), nock (interpreter), mint (compiler), span (type), twig (expression), gate (function), mold (constructor), core (object), mark (protocol). It's Newspeak for programmers.

The overall concept seems to be a federated social system, like Diaspora. Everybody has a online presence which they own. But you can take your ball and go home, moving your online presence somewhere else, and it still gets found by others. Somehow. (That's a hard problem at scale.)

There's a claim that nobody can create vast numbers of identities for spam purposes because there are only 2^32 possible human identities. (That number should have been at least as big as the population of the planet. 2^36, maybe.) Apparently you have to buy address space, which is a profit center for somebody.

There's a download, which gets you their "OS" (which runs on top of another OS), an interpreter for their Hoon language and access to their chat environment.

Not sure what to think of this, but someone put in a lot of work.

Re: What Urbit is

#189

Post by kazinator » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 6:03 AM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #162

yarvin9 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning Lisp is easy. Learning Haskell is hard. But unlearning either is next to impossible. So anyone writing a new functional language would be best advised to not have that problem. Now, one might feel differently if Lisp, or Haskell, or any other functional language, was such a conspicuous market success. Under the circumstances, however, I don't think one can be faulted for the suspicion that perhaps functional…

> I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language Only if you're willing to insert " typed". Without at least one , the debate is meaningless: every party assumes that unqualified "typed" means " type" for some different choice of and then it's just about asserting word semantics.

And, here we go: dug up this gem from elsewhere in this comment tree:

> A "dynamic" type system isn't actually a type system.

" type" isn't "type". Use my definition, god damn it! "Type" really refers to " type".

(Dynamic is scary, so scare quotes are fitting, by the way).

Re: What Urbit is

#190

Post by Rusky » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 6:04 AM UTC

lhnz wrote: post #145

zardgiv wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Citation needed]

Classic example is Linux and Torvalds. But I was referring to the fact that nobody else is solving this specific problem. You either stay happy with your collection of walled gardens or you wait to see if he can unbreak the internet. In fact in this case, the work goes ahead anyway. Perhaps you end up using it in ten years, or perhaps you don't. But neither of us gain anything from this argument at the present time.

There are plenty of people working on this problem who aren't self-inflated racists. For example, https://sandstorm.io/ tackles a lot of the same questions without any of the deliberate obfuscation or insular community of Urbit (and, I might add, without a completely insane and un-optimizable VM underneath).