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

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#201

Post by wdanilo » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:46 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #136

kustosz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We store them in a separate section in the source file, which is hidden by default when editing. So a bare .luna file is a readable text file, containing some metadata at the bottom, which is not shown when editing with our editor. This way we achieve clear representation and full portability of the source files.

Nice. A few more questions: Is does z-ordering just follow the painter's model? As a user am I allowed to place two nodes at the same x/y coordinate? As a user am I allowed to position nodes in a way that creates a visual ambiguity in the diagram (e.g., two or more perfectly overlapping edges among nodes)? Edit: As a user am I allowed to place a node at an x/y that lies within the bbox of another node?

1) it uses painters model 2) you are allowed to place in the same x/y, but we're looking for a way to indicate it to you. 3) you are able to place nodes so the edges overlap, but we also are looking for a way to indicate it to you.

Keep in mind, that point 2 and 3 does not happen during your workflow normally, so these are very rare situations. We want to support them just from the "purity" perspective, but they are very low on our priority list currently.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#202

Post by wdanilo » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:47 PM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #104

wdanilo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid Luna is not for you then! However, I strongly doubt that visualization of OO concepts will bring you a productive environment. I also believe that the combination of functional programming and visual paradigm is the way to go here :)

How do you do basic branching and loops?

Each node is a function, so if a node uses itself, you've got recursion (loop). Branching like if is just few edges going into a node and the result goes out :)

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#203

Post by it_learnses » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #188

im pretty you just got called out and are walking it back now. thats fine. there are lots of ways of handling typing in javascript. i could be reading more into you answers than is there, but your apparent proud ignorance is, i think, fairly deserving of a little bit of public shaming.

you deserve more public shaming than him. Sure he hates javascript and has valid reasons to do so. You, on the other hand are so insecure (probably because you've spent years using this language), that you have to make personal attacks.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#204

Post by the_cat_kittles » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

simplify wrote: post #195

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, c…

this is a good characterization of what causes people confusion, and i think the parallel with people going to c from js is totally right. i experienced that myself. its a great way to put it and i will probably use it, thanks!

the second point about being more understanding surely applies more to the person proudly hating a language with no constructive support about why, and little evidence of an effort to overcome the language's obstacles. sure, i dont know everything about this person, but i take the comment at face value, which seems to be the norm. maybe calling them out on it isnt helpful? i dont know, but it didn't seem that bad.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#205

Post by agentultra » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:50 PM UTC

crimsonalucard wrote: post #45

agentultra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Math. When learning graph theory it can be quite useful at first. But once you start using set theory the graphical representation actually hides more information than it gives and intuition starts to get in the way of us discovering useful properties.

I think this visual stuff is perfect for functional (math based) programming as composed expressions aren't easily readable as english. I find language to be better suited for imperative procedures. Think about it, I have a list of tasks, do I write that list in ordered English bullet points or do I draw a diagram?

I find simple math to be much more elegant and easier to comprehend then a jumbled visual diagram. It's much easier to understand a universal quantification in a standard notation than reasoning by visual analogies.

Programming languages tend to be a little less expressive and elegant. They're more complicated too. For reasons of course... but I don't think I'm going to be writing algorithms and data-structures in such a tedious notation as a diagram.

Graphics are good for some things but programming I don't think is one of them.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#206

Post by the_cat_kittles » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:52 PM UTC

it_learnses wrote: post #203

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #188

im pretty you just got called out and are walking it back now. thats fine. there are lots of ways of handling typing in javascript. i could be reading more into you answers than is there, but your apparent proud ignorance is, i think, fairly deserving of a little bit of public shaming.

you deserve more public shaming than him. Sure he hates javascript and has valid reasons to do so. You, on the other hand are so insecure (probably because you've spent years using this language), that you have to make personal attacks.

well i can tell this is turning into the bad kind of internet commenting. you are calling me insecure- thats a personal attack. is it wrong to call someone a snob for being snobby?

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#207

Post by crawfordcomeaux » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:54 PM UTC

wdanilo wrote: post #154

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you, though don't necessarily agree, either because I don't know that passionate people are communicative people. I know many passionate people, myself included, who've been known to be rather introverted. After reading some of their comments & the copy on their homepage, the creators of Luna sound like they could be fairly mindful people. I'm betting they're seeking people who enshrine certain…

crawfordcomeaux I'm really curious about your further thoughts. Could we chat more about it? Would you be so nice and drop me a line to wojciech @ luna-lang.org ?

Gladly! Consider the line dropped.

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#208

Post by wdanilo » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

dgreensp wrote: post #193

wdanilo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

Hi! Thank you for such great description of the process. In fact I know it well, I originate from the same domain - i was working for few years as FX TD :)

You can think of Luna just like about a general purpose programming language. You can define your own types and you can even define how to decode bits from binary files to your structures. The GUI runs in HTML, so you can utilize any html component to display output. Definitely, your use case is doeable, however the amount of libraries currently available is very, very low, so it will need some love :)

Did I answered your questions? :)

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#209

Post by chimen » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

wdanilo wrote: post #184

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…

the_cat_kittles I think you don't get the point of my answer or simply my answer was confusing, sorry for that. I did not wanted to start a big discussion here and just throw a controversial, stupid example. But it very clearly shows my main point. The point is that it is easily to write a code in Javascript that looks ok, but is not. The lack of good type system, legacy of how it was implemented on the beginning and…

I disliked it myself up until ES6 when it started to be "enjoyable" or..should I say less annoying. I program in 6 languages (it may not be much but enough to draw a conclusion from a sample) and I can't say I have one without it's list of wtf's.

By placing big keywords in your bio like "Serial enterpreneur, haskeller, programming languages design freak, former senior R&D technical director in the biggest film studios in Europe" + "hates java script" and keeping your flag up here makes it look very unprofessional. Of course, who are we to judge if not...your target audience for a "functional programming language", visual or not.

I remember when RoR came out and some [1] "cool dudes" decided to mock everything else on the planet. RoR vs php, RoR vs this and that. It made me feel sick even though RoR was a big step up from everything else back then. It took me 2 - 3 years to even consider it because of that.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnnpbVW7Yb8

Re: Luna – Visual and textual functional programming language

#210

Post by wdanilo » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #189

wdanilo wrote: post #26

Hi guys! My name is Wojciech Danilo and I'm one of the founders of Luna. The timing for this news is a little unfortunate, because we are just before releasing Luna as an Open Source project! However, it's great time to answer some questions and give you a short update what has happened for the last couple months: 1. We've raised a seed round of $1M, so we can safely focus on product development and shortly on commun…

"we are just before releasing Luna as an Open Source project!" Is there a particular timeline on that? I'd love to see how this is implemented (and - importantly - whether or not this can easily be integrated into other software).

We are right now finishing installers on all platforms, making examples and working on new website. I don't want to set a deadline, but we work hard to make it just "around the corner" and a you can see, we're almost there :)