Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advanced programming languages (2009)

matt.might.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 208 posts

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#121

Post by gaius »

premium-concern wrote: post #61
dsacco wrote: post #12

This post is very fortuitous for me. I've been looking to learn a functional language and I had more or less narrowed my options to Haskell, OCaml and Scala. I liked the breakdown between these languages and the resources. Can anyone who programs in Haskell or OCaml regularly tell me the current state of standard and third party library support? I'm very attracted to Scala because it has JVM support, which sounds fan…

I can recommend Scala: - It is mature and rock-solid, but still manages to evolve, fix issues and simplify/remove features. Most other languages are purely additive, meaning you will have to carry on all the baggage since the languages' inception. - It is a language which is interested in identifying the best way to solve common programming issues and spares you with all this ideological "OOP/FP is bad" bullshit. - I…

Once you have had real Hindley-Milner Scala feels painfully primitive. Just go straight to OCaml.

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#122

Post by startling »

kensai wrote: post #113
tonyjstark wrote: post #9

For a real world project pick a suitable language that will not only help you to implement whatever you have to implement but also to maintain the project. Also you should be able to find other programmers knowing that language if you need to. Maybe even use the language you already know even if it is not the newest and hottest stuff. But for private or side projects use whatever enlightens you. Those projects should…

Has anyone experience with "Curry" (functional logic programming)? If it has all the advantages of Haskell plus some possibilities of logical languages, it should be really interesting for experimental approaches. http://www-ps.informatik.uni-kiel.de/currywiki/

GHC is top notch, I wouldn't say any language without a mature compiler "has all the advantages of Haskell".

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#123

Post by bogomipz »

phamilton wrote: post #54
Bromskloss wrote: post #42

> It's untyped, which makes it ideal for web-based programming and rapid prototyping. Given its Lisp heritage, Scheme is a natural fit for artificial intelligence. Why does being untyped and having a Lisp heritage make Scheme suitable for these three tasks?

Web based is because JSON is always easier with dynamic types. Rapid prototyping is because it requires less explicit up front design due to dynamic types. Artificial Intelligence is because metaprogramming is easier in homoiconic languages.

I'm really intrigued by your last point that "Artificial Intelligence is because metaprogramming is easier in homoiconic languages."

Can you elaborate on this? Why are or what about homoiconic lnagunages make them more suitable for metaprogramming and AI in general?

Thanks

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#124

Post by bogomipz »

shrugger wrote: post #74
premium-concern wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can recommend Scala: - It is mature and rock-solid, but still manages to evolve, fix issues and simplify/remove features. Most other languages are purely additive, meaning you will have to carry on all the baggage since the languages' inception. - It is a language which is interested in identifying the best way to solve common programming issues and spares you with all this ideological "OOP/FP is bad" bullshit. - I…

I am so freaking excited about Scala Native. I haven't been so genuinely excited and enthusiastic about something for such a long time, but Scala Native is so awesome. I feel like turning Scala into a cross-platform language is the best idea possible. I'd love to see Scala someday be able to just dump out WebAssembly, or JVM bytecode, or LLVM IR, or whatever the next "hip" format is, while keeping the language the sa…

What is Scala native? Is there a Scala that doesn't rely on the JVM for hosting?

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#125

Post by rayiner »

kazinator wrote: post #104
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PL theorists generally talk about whether or not syntactic terms (as opposed to runtime values) have types. Scheme is untyped by that definition.

PL theorists don't get own the definition of what "type" means. Type pervades computing. A directory is a different type from a file or character device. A JPEG is a different file type from a PNG. You have MIME types in your e-mail. An ICMP packet is a different type from a TCP datagram. Machine language instruction sets have types: pointers, signed and unsigned words of various sizes, floating-point values. "Type"…

> PL theorists don't get own the definition of what "type" means.

Every field has its terms of art. "Type" is a term of art in PL theory; PL theorists are entitled to define it how they want. Of course you can use the word however you want, but you can't complain if that non-standard usage results in miscommunication with others.

Besides that, it's very useful to able to talk about the "types" of syntactic terms as distinct from the "types" of runtime values. You can easily reason about syntactic types. You can, for example, use syntactic types to resolve syntax ambiguities (as in C++) or prove program properties. Runtime "types" are much less useful to PL theorists because it's hard to reason about them.

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#126

Post by szemet »

klibertp wrote: post #71
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PL theorists generally talk about whether or not syntactic terms (as opposed to runtime values) have types. Scheme is untyped by that definition.

PL theorists - from what I saw, not being one - prefer the term "unityped". It's not true that there are no (static!) types - there is a single, unnamed type which contains all possible values.

It depends on the context. I guess rayiner has referred to "untyped lambda calculus".

Thats not a bad name as it is self consistent - there are no type expressions in that language. If you say that it is actally "unityped" it is (just) your (semantical) categorization looking at it from a higher level perspective.

Of course on the other side whole numbers were just "number"-s, before fractionals came, so in the end it may be ok to introduce higher level perspective in naming just to diferrentiate better. :)

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#127

Post by [deleted] »

klibertp wrote: post #71
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PL theorists generally talk about whether or not syntactic terms (as opposed to runtime values) have types. Scheme is untyped by that definition.

PL theorists - from what I saw, not being one - prefer the term "unityped". It's not true that there are no (static!) types - there is a single, unnamed type which contains all possible values.

[deleted]

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#128

Post by peteretep »

phamilton wrote: post #97
hesdeadjim wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't buy the "dynamic types" lets you iterate faster argument. You are implicitly using types, and how often does that type change such that all the code you've written doesn't need to be updated anyways? And without the benefit of a compiler to tell you what you need to fix. A language like Go is fast to iterate, trivial to parse and serialize JSON, and simple enough that the tools let me make sweeping chang…

Iterate faster != Rapid prototyping. The type system definitely helps with long term maintainability (and therefore fast iteration) but when your goal is to whip out a Proof of Concept for a greenfield project Ruby wins for me hands down. (Provided it isn't overly complex, defined as "can be completed in an hour or two").

Can you explain how types slow you down for whipping up a proof of concept?

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#129

Post by bogomipz »

continuational wrote: post #120
dsacco wrote: post #12

This post is very fortuitous for me. I've been looking to learn a functional language and I had more or less narrowed my options to Haskell, OCaml and Scala. I liked the breakdown between these languages and the resources. Can anyone who programs in Haskell or OCaml regularly tell me the current state of standard and third party library support? I'm very attracted to Scala because it has JVM support, which sounds fan…

Knowing Java won't help you much in learning Scala. It's the functional programming parts that will trip you up if you haven't done that before, and this is the most valuable part to learn. I use Scala every day, and it was easy to learn; but I suspect that was because I did a lot of functional programming before that.

But ins't one of the nice parts about Scala that you can use it strictly for OO programming, use it for strictly for FP or both?

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#130

Post by bogomipz »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #10
AtticHacker wrote: post #6

I'm really surprised that "Learn you a Haskell" is not in the Haskell resources list.

I've seen people recommending this book more recently: http://haskellbook.com/ I'm not sure I like LYAH as a practical resource: It's silly and might put people at ease, but I wouldn't feel comfortable writing a database or parsing tool or compiler after reading it. Real World Haskell is better for these, but is a little dated by now.

I agree, I was immediately turned off by Learn You a Haskell, it felt way to dense to me. This looks like a promising and more approachable(in my opinion) book:

https://www.manning.com/books/learn-haskell

Post reply on HN