Eve: Programming designed for humans • Hacker News Board

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#351

Post by duncan_bayne » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 10:51 AM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #171

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…

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…

> When you ask a genie for $1mm you don't expect him to go rob a bank or kill your dad for his life insurance to get it.

Well, maybe not the first time. But players in my campaigns tend to learn quickly.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#352

Post by astrobe_ » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 11:31 AM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #202

pjc50 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why comments that specify what the code does are a "code smell". Comments should explain things that are not obvious from the code. Comments should be things like // Note: PCI-DSS requirements apply below // Must check status register and FIFO to determine completion due to flaky hardware // Algorithm below is modified Knuth-Morris-Pratt // This is O(scary), but seems quick enough in practice. (Now, if someon…

You didn't solve the OPs problem, you just moved it around. In his case, his algo said X, and his code did Y.. very easy to see the mistake. In your case, lets add a comment // Note: PCI-DSS requirements apply below Now 3 years later, the law changes and the requirements do not apply. So you are at the same situation. Code does X, comments say Y. Which is right? Not a very easy to keep comments and code in sync

What about this:

1. Specs&design docs and code should be in separate files, because I believe the separation of concerns should be applied there. That's indeed the opposite of literate programming.

2. There should be two-way links between documentation and code: in the code, one should have links to the spec; and from the spec, one should have links to the code.

3. If the specs or the code changes, those links should be displayed in a different way to warn the reader that things are potentially not in sync. How to do that: check if the links point to the latest version. The maintainers have to update the links to remove the warnings.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#353

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 11:47 AM UTC

edem wrote: post #85

LightTable was not updated for a year now. I actually backed it and now the IDE seems abandoned never to reach 1.0. I've lost trust in the developers and I won't recommend Eve to anyone because of the fear that they will abandon it as well and start chasing the next big dream.

[deleted]

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#354

Post by n_mca » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 12:01 PM UTC

This looks cool, but can somebody point me towards the details? As in, I'm a semantics / pl-theory person and want to know wtf is going on...

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#355

Post by arcbyte » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 12:02 PM UTC

FrancoDiaz wrote: post #227

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…

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 your thoughts in a precise fashion. Should languages create higher-level abstractions to allow humans to reason about programs more efficiently? Yes! But that's not what this environment is about. I think you'r…

>Think about how we program. We are given requirements and we noodle about it for a bit and start writing some code that is nowhere close to what the final source will be.

That is not how one writes software...

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#356

Post by zubairq » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 12:03 PM UTC

tigershark wrote: post #347

jimbokun wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 your thoughts in a precise fashion." Non-programmer: OK, Eve sounds great, so, I want to search for a Slack message. How would I do that? Eve-programmer: Obviously, it's just: search @slack [#message from body…

This is just a dsl, you can write easily something equivalent or even better in other languages, but doesn't really tell you anything about the underlying language. What is the difference with: let messages = search slack_message body to me this version seems more readable without the square brackets, hash and @ distractions. Why as a non programmer I would ever want to know when to use @ instead of # and when to put…

No, it's more than just saying let messages = search, as in eve this is being run whenever search changes, whereas in other languages it is run when you explicitly call it

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#357

Post by coldnebo » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 12:09 PM UTC

_mhyx wrote: post #261

avereveard wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so basically Java?

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

Must be a server-side dev. Java client-side trainwrecks include: struts, tempest, Java Server Faces, AWT, Swing.

True it's unfair to blame Java alone for these, because client side is more difficult-- we've been searching for solutions for decades in a variety of languages.

Modern front-end is a mush of dozens of tools/contexts, etc. Way more complex than TeX, and way less reliable and with minimal debugging context. But as the Eve guys have said, we're using the same layering of precompilers and interpreters we've always done. It's a mess because it's not just Java (or Python or Ruby) it's CSS HTML JS XML JSON, and the whole rest of the alphabet soup.

It's about time we reconsider platform as a whole again rather than merely a sum of fragments. That's why I find Eve interesting.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#358

Post by alkonaut » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 12:46 PM UTC

This looks a lot excel or Access, but better. Excel is also just a database of state and a global update "tick". Anyone who is a programmer has probably at one time or other taken that spreadsheet or Access utility used for task X at a company and tried to make a "real" application out of it - only to realize that it takes an enormous amount of time.

This would help with those scenarios. Its perhaps not the best tool for general programming but it looks promising for creating maintainable data centric utilities. Instead of all those spreadsheets.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#359

Post by tluyben2 » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 12:50 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #342

gugagore wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your message could still be effective (or even more effective) without putting down "religious people".

He said religious fanatics who are also people but a niche inside a religion. What is wrong with that as it rings through? Both defend something mostly without bases with extreme vigor and energy.

Cannot edit the post for some reason, but sleepy this morning and not native English ; rings true of course.

Re: Eve: Programming designed for humans

#360

Post by zubairq » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 12:53 PM UTC

handojin wrote: post #298

ibdknox wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually Chris Granger was heavily involved with Clojure. David Nolen gives a great shoutout to Chris Granger and Eve's predecesor, Light Table at minute 17:00 a couple of weeks ago at the Clojure TRE conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mty0RwkPmE8