Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language • Hacker News Board

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#191

Post by the_cat_kittles » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

simplify wrote: post #187

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it does, because you are clearly just a snob. its so obvious that people are just looking for reasons to hate javascript when they post shit like your dumb example. though i concede that is a pretty hilarious "wat". virtually all the dumb "gotchas" never show up, and the real gotchas are learned early, just like other languages. you are like a classical musician who thinks every other kind of music is not real and ea…

Sorry dude, I'm going to have to step in; you're being too strong in your counter attitude. I've been writing and teaching JavaScript professionally for many years, and while I don't hate the language, I don't blame those who do. After learning and using a statically typed language, it becomes absurd how much effort you have to put in to debug a JavaScript type error – a problem that is amplified by the language desi…

you are entitled to your opinion, and i appreciate that you offer it. and those are legitimate gripes. ive written it professionally for many years as well. there are alot of nice things about javascript as well, so in general i like the language. alot of what i read in the initial answer is a guy who wants to show he is a member of the cool kids club by hating on javascript. its so lame.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#192

Post by a-nikolaev » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:22 PM UTC

Looks like a lazy functional Python ) Very nice aesthetics of presentation.

There are a few things I am concerned, if you don't mind: I think that actually visualizing lazy computation can be quite a challenge, because of its on-demand nature. One might say that a lazily defined expression is computed (and should be visualized) where it's used, rather than where it's defined. There is a lot of substitutions going on under the hood, and computation is not as clearly localized as it would be in eager evaluation. Also, the tight binding between the code and the visualizations may limit your ability to optimize code for efficiency.

The True / False switch looks cool, but it feels like you are cheating here a little bit by using a boolean literal. Would it look equally nice if it's a function call or some complex expression that is possibly not known yet (as in a function definition)? I have a feeling that at the end of the day Luna may require a very complex visual language that is not easier than the textual alternatives.

But this is more like arbitrary concerns that will be hopefully clarified once you release the whole system. Thank you for your work.

Thumbs up for exploring these new alternative for writing code. I think, it may help us write better and safer programs in the future.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#193

Post by dgreensp » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

wdanilo wrote: post #156

dgreensp wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I implement pixel-level video effects with Luna (e.g. warping, time map, segmentation, keying, etc.)?

Sure! Is webgl good enough for you? If so, I will prepare an example and include it in the official release. If you need more "standard" GPU power, then it will be possible, but a little bit hackish on the beginning (we don't have libraries for it yet and you will need to connect to other language to keep the performance. We will support language interoperability, but in the first reelease it will be hackish. Still i…

Thanks for the reply!

So do you have first-class support for video as well as images? It seems like to have fun with video editing in Luna, you'd need to have built-in support for videos an inputs and outputs, and have a way to play the video output on the screen, and maybe scrub through it, and at a minimum be able to run shaders on the "current frame" and export the resulting video out. The next level after that would be being able to load multiple frames into memory at the same time, and being able to do a combination of "offline" and "online" processing with some CPU involvement (e.g. calculating a motion track and storing it, or applying a filter that can't be expressed as a pure shader program).

I don't know enough about Luna yet to know what code to do these things would "look" like on the visual side, or come to think of it where the computation is being performed (in the browser?). Much more to learn, but the project looks great, a sort of "holy grail" in a way.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#194

Post by wdanilo » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:31 PM UTC

fareesh wrote: post #103

Cool concept - is there an open source repo of some kind which shows how a complex application (kitchen sink kind of app) is made?

Thank you! We will be releasing demos soon!

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#195

Post by simplify » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:36 PM UTC

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #191

simplify wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry dude, I'm going to have to step in; you're being too strong in your counter attitude. I've been writing and teaching JavaScript professionally for many years, and while I don't hate the language, I don't blame those who do. After learning and using a statically typed language, it becomes absurd how much effort you have to put in to debug a JavaScript type error – a problem that is amplified by the language desi…

you are entitled to your opinion, and i appreciate that you offer it. and those are legitimate gripes. ive written it professionally for many years as well. there are alot of nice things about javascript as well, so in general i like the language. alot of what i read in the initial answer is a guy who wants to show he is a member of the cool kids club by hating on javascript. its so lame.

Try to be more charitable by seeing it from their point of view. Imagine being used to a language that helps you be rapidly productive and shields you from a huge catalog of mistakes. But one day you're forced to use JavaScript, and suddenly you've got nothing. It'd be like driving in a doorless jeep with no seatbelts on a high rise highway with no guard rails. Sure you can do what you want, and even in some nice, clever ways. But there are so many ways to hurt yourself, and no natural protections to prevent it.

To put it another way, it's like throwing a frontend developer into the world of C. Suddenly you have to be aware of and correctly manage your memory explicitly, whereas before you were safely protected from having to think about it.

Lastly, not everyone can voice their opinions so well. Communication is a difficult thing, and understanding what you're trying to communicate more so. If someone says they hate something, it's not always baseless. Instead of jumping to name-calling, have more patience in trying to understand why.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#196

Post by wdanilo » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:36 PM UTC

shalabhc wrote: post #164

wdanilo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a bogus! We are FP enthusiasts and the word "category" has really strong connections to our type system. However, the name might be a little misleading so we've already changed it. Anyway, we treat our types as categories. For example 1 belongs to a singleton category 1 (thus you can write 1 :: 1) but it also belongs to category of positive numbers or all numbers in general, thus again you can write (1 :: 1…

1 also belongs to 'all integers from 1 through 10'. Is this also a category? (I assume yes). How is this category expressed in Luna?

Yes it is, `1 :: 1 | .. | 10`. The pipe combines categories, so you can as well write `1 :: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10`. Both of the forms are however not yet supported in the main branch of official compiler and will not be supported during the first release yet.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#197

Post by joshmarinacci » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:39 PM UTC

wdanilo wrote: post #92

kowdermeister wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you convince VC-s, that there's need for a new programming language? (I'm totally not saying there's no need, but since it's highly technical and I probably would fail at it I'm really curious)

We are not really making a programming language. So, err.. ok, we are. But it is "just" an engine. Luna is a data processing platform. It allows you to prototype, design and deploy data processing applications much faster than it is currently possible, while working in an elegant, interactive data visualization environment. Moreover, we are supported by many cool companies that want to use Luna for their purposes, in…

Wow. That's exciting. I wouldn't think it would be possible to get a programming language funded, but you found a way. I look forward to seeing where things go. Good luck!

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#198

Post by wdanilo » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:40 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #146

wdanilo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use the name for a long time now and we love it, however I agree it could be confusing. We failed, however, to find a better one. I've got a crazy idea here! I know that HN has some magical powers, so if you have any idea of a better name for a dual-representation, functional, visual language, we'd be more than happy to talk about it and change it before the release (after the release it would be too late)! :)

Janus/Ianus? Two headed god of.. You know what, I'll just link the wiki page: > In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus (; Latin: Iānus, pronounced [ˈjaː.nus]) is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus

Thank you for this name! I really like the connection, it is in fact super cool. The only thing that puts me off when thinking about this name is that "Janus" is a very similar name to "Janusz", which is in polish a name used very often to describe in jokes greedy and unfair entrepreneur :D

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#199

Post by SamUK96 » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:42 PM UTC

imhoguy wrote: post #142

wdanilo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to alienate potential converts than convert JavaScripters! Just joking of course. It is hard to hide hate to a non-language treated as a super cool language. But you are right, I've never thought about it this way. I will change it, thank you!

Have you tried ECMAScript 6+? You could reconsider your hate ;)

Shhh you may fool the guy and make him look silly, that's not nice! ;)

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#200

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:45 PM UTC

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #183

wdanilo wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the_cat_kittles I did not wanted to hurt your feelings. Of course it is a language. By saying it is not I just wanted to express my strong anty-JS feelings, but they are of course very subjective :)

cool, i didnt want to hurt your feelings, just point out that you are a baseless snob

[deleted]