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Eve: Programming designed for humans

programming.witheve.com

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Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#291

Post by ar-jan »

I've occasionally checked on Eve's progress since I first saw it mentioned here on Hacker News about two years ago - nice to see all the progress you've made!

A question regarding the centrality of data: when I first read about this, I thought an important part would be a kind of user interface for building relational databases - perhaps something like fieldbook. You mention Eve already includes a relational query engine - is a UI for modelling tables and for data entry also on the roadmap?

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#292

Post by cghendrix »

hairy_man674 wrote: post #271
_mhyx wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good tooling, easy to understand, unambiguous? Sounds like Java. Why can't people just use Java?

Java? What a horrible language.

How so? (Just genuinely curious as I always here this) I have asked the Java developers at my job if they have this common mindset and they don't seem to agree. I don't work with Java that much so I'm just honestly curious.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#294

Post by xj9 »

darkmighty wrote: post #278
xj9 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can eliminate software engineering as a profession our work will be done. There will be nothing left for humans to do, because at that point we will have invented a General AI. Up until that point, software engineering will be a well paid job. I really don't understand this attitude that everyone should be a programmer or that programming should be easy. It isn't easy. Obviously, we should remove unnecessary fr…

It's not unthinkable that a language, by design, facilitates or enforces precise definitions. As a far-fetched example, think of Lego. You can't "fail to compile" your Lego bricks. You have a finite selection of bricks (all clearly visible and usually available within arm's reach), and your job is to just lay one at a time. Given any brick, it's "obvious" to a human how it fits with other bricks. The worst you can do…

Not at all. Good tools are very important, and we shouldn't stop working to make them better. What I disagree with is the idea that good enough tools can replace engineers without them becoming General AIs. Until we get to that point, there will be systems that need to be built that only professionals are qualified to work on. I'm not saying that we need licensing boards or any of that nonsense, just that nobody is going to merge poorly constructed code into an important project.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#295

Post by king_magic »

FrancoDiaz wrote: post #241
king_magic wrote: post #28

How is this significantly different from something like Light Table? (edit: didn't realize it was build by the people who built Light Table). It feels like a rehash of that + Python notebooks, with a bit of Xcode's playground thrown in. Problem is that despite those tools being available, I literally never use them. Ever. Nor do I have a need for them. I kind of like the idea of being able to find bits of code in a l…

I hate being preachy, but Problem is that despite those tools being available, I literally never use them. Ever. Nor do I have a need for them. You don't know what you don't know.

I never said I've never used them. I've used them and decided they were not useful for me based on those experiences. So no, in this case, I do in fact know.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#296

Post by the_af »

foota wrote: post #186
the_af wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an extreme position. Function names are a valuable hint of what the function is supposed to do. But if the name doesn't match the implementation, which one is wrong? We don't know.

But you do know something might be off, which is better than not knowing when something is off.

Fully agreed. That's why I consider descriptive identifiers a valuable hint.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#297

Post by cmontella »

ar-jan wrote: post #291

I've occasionally checked on Eve's progress since I first saw it mentioned here on Hacker News about two years ago - nice to see all the progress you've made! A question regarding the centrality of data: when I first read about this, I thought an important part would be a kind of user interface for building relational databases - perhaps something like fieldbook. You mention Eve already includes a relational query en…

Yes, this incarnation of Eve isn't what you would take to an end user and expect them to use it. We have a lot of ideas on this front, mentioned in milestone 3 of the roadmap on the post. If you take at look at some of our blog posts on incidentalcomplexity.com, you'll see some of our thinking.

The reason that we are releasing an Eve focused on developers is that we want something more immediately useful while we research what the right direction is for the UI.

But before we get there, we could definitely see some tooling for the current version. You could imagine a grid block that is embedded in the document, for instance.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#298

Post by handojin »

ibdknox wrote: post #170
jbclements wrote: post #150

I think that Eve is tackling the wrong problem. Allow me an analogy: "Bronk, the math designed for humans." Instead of dense algebraic expressions like "3x+49", you get to write "thrice the value of x plus 49." You may consider this a straw man, but I think that if you look hard at existing programming languages, you'll see that they are all designed for humans, and that the challenge in programming is in formulating…

There's still code here, the text is just for people, so I wonder if this is maybe a misunderstanding. The language presented is a variant of datalog and is as formal as any other language. If you're curious in the semantics, they boil down to Dedalus [1]. As a simple example of that, here's a clock: http://play.witheve.com/#/examples/clock.eve [1]: https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-...

I think the intent is clear for people with preexisting familiarity with the same ideas. A clojure dev with some datomic. I read declarative, set oriented, database of facts, pattern matching and thought 'the revenge of prolog then'.

This is really nice work. I mean this in the best possible way: I think I could teach my children to use this.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#299

Post by dgudkov »

cmontella wrote: post #180
noonespecial wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to always happen when people try to make programming "more human". Programming languages succeed by walling off ambiguity . The better and faster they do it, the stronger the language, even if the syntax looks ugly. Even your example shows it instantly. We know how to read 3x+49 but would have to ask of "thrice the value of x plus 49", "did you mean 3 times what you get from adding 49 and x or 49 more than…

Actually, we agree completely with this view. We tried going down this path [1], and ultimately concluded it was the wrong direction, for many of the reasons you point out here. But Eve is a full programming language. The "humane" aspects are not about making the language more ambiguous, but about changing the focus of tooling from the machine to the human. It's about things as simple as Unicode support for language…

>changing the focus of tooling from the machine to the human

>It's about debugging tools that work with you to solve a problem.

>we want humane tooling

I know how hard it is to explain what exactly your product does. I myself constantly struggle with this. Eve is an interesting concept that is worth a closer look and discussion. But you guys need to learn how to explain its benefits using a less ambiguous language.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#300

Post by rayiner »

jbclements wrote: post #150

I think that Eve is tackling the wrong problem. Allow me an analogy: "Bronk, the math designed for humans." Instead of dense algebraic expressions like "3x+49", you get to write "thrice the value of x plus 49." You may consider this a straw man, but I think that if you look hard at existing programming languages, you'll see that they are all designed for humans, and that the challenge in programming is in formulating…

I don't think that's a fair characterization at all. This isn't just a wordier way to say the same thing. It's a much more declarative way of expressing what code should do.

The global invariant example is a good one. That's not just expressing the same thing less tersely.

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