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Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

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Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#141

Post by gravypod »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #119
gravypod wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also say that no one in the scientific world should be writing ASM for their programs. Does that mean I'm also telling them not to use any compiled language? No.

ASM != Machine code. That aside, you haven't explained why you think the languages you listed are better suited for scientists than Fortran. What are your issues with modern Fortran?

Modern library availability, larger pool of programmers, better compiler technologies, more features that apply to modern hardware, cleaner code, and better documentation are all present on my languages. They are not present on FORTRAN.

Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#142

Post by cbcoutinho »

na85 wrote: post #127
cbcoutinho wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair criticism. One of the disadvantages of Fortran is that it caters to a very non-sexy segment of the programming population, by that I mean that UX/UI is not of great concern - a lot of learning materials I come across reflect that. Unless you find a textbook, you'll probably end up looking through undergraduate/graduate engineering lectures, or some presentation from a national lab (see below). First que…

I clicked on your first link out of curiosity and see that it's for F90/95. My first reaction was to wonder whether it would cover the object-oriented paradigm and IEEE floats added in later standards, but then I realized that this is a manifestation of the problem: lecture slides from 2014 that fail to cover even F03. >First question, do you have access to a compiler? Sure do. In fact I managed to fumble my way thro…

Sorry to hear it was such a struggle for you, I didn't mean to be condescending in my previous comment. I guess from your comment Fortran isn't as easy to learn as I thought - I'll remember that in the future.

The fact that 'the standard' has a different meaning in Fortran compared to other languages is indeed frustrating (see 2008 standard conforming status of various compilers here [0] as of Apr 2016); however, that being said backwards compatibility is taken very seriously, so learning the basics of 90/95 isn't a waste compared to the later versions of the standard.

I'm not sure why there isn't a better focus on a thorough introduction. I learned Fortran as I have learned all languages - with great frustration. Fortran hasn't been any different for me in that regard.

BTW, here's a great resource I've found helpful in the past that does a great job of comparing Fortran to Python (e.g great if you have a numpy background).

[1] http://www.fortran90.org/index.html

Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#143

Post by na85 »

cbcoutinho wrote: post #142
na85 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked on your first link out of curiosity and see that it's for F90/95. My first reaction was to wonder whether it would cover the object-oriented paradigm and IEEE floats added in later standards, but then I realized that this is a manifestation of the problem: lecture slides from 2014 that fail to cover even F03. >First question, do you have access to a compiler? Sure do. In fact I managed to fumble my way thro…

Sorry to hear it was such a struggle for you, I didn't mean to be condescending in my previous comment. I guess from your comment Fortran isn't as easy to learn as I thought - I'll remember that in the future. The fact that 'the standard' has a different meaning in Fortran compared to other languages is indeed frustrating (see 2008 standard conforming status of various compilers here [0] as of Apr 2016); however, tha…

No sweat, it wasn't condescending.

I think for me, the problem is that my background is not in comp sci or software engineering. I am an aerospace engineer and am mostly self-taught save for what I retained from my first year C++ course back in the early aughts or gleaned from my sibling who is an ex Googler.

So I end up not grokking a lot of tutorials targeted at professional programmers, maybe?

I've written C, C++, C#, PHP, Python, lisp, Tcl, and Fortran and it was Fortran that presented the biggest hurdle in terms of finding quality info.

I sometimes wonder why nobody wrote a "Practical Common Lisp" for Fortran. Some artifact of the different characteristic Fortran user vs the Lisp user maybe?

Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#144

Post by lucaspiller »

taude wrote: post #84
lucaspiller wrote: post #65

I worked on a project a few years ago that was a mixture of Erlang and Ruby. Most of us were new to Erlang, coming from a Ruby background. We wanted to use Erlang to its strengths for high availability and to make the platform distributed, and Ruby (via BERT/Ernie) to its strengths for business logic. Unfortunately Ernie didn't work as well as it advertised, had many edge cases, and in the end it was a big bottleneck…

Do you have any experience with Elixir? I'm hearing that Ruby devs like it for similar syntax that runs on the Erlang runtime....(But I don't really know much about it, but I am curious.)

I learnt Erlang before Elixir became popular. Other than a few sanity changes (like ordering of arguments for some built in functions), I prefer the Erlang syntax. The syntax is Ruby like, but it's still different enough.

Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#145

Post by charlie-r »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #131
charlie-r wrote: post #31

We're starting to develop greenfield APIs in Scala (with Play) rather than PHP (with Laravel) and we've noticed new developers without experience in either language have a surprisingly similar time-to-productivity. Here are some major factors: PHP's dynamic typing combined with Laravel's magical approach makes discoverability hard. A developer can't trace through a request by starting from a controller method and nav…

I'm bookmarking this as a case study. You should comment here more often esp when these topics come up. :)

Thank you for the encouragement

Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#146

Post by qb45 »

kronos29296 wrote: post #99
gravypod wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Julia, C++ with libraries, Python with Cython or Numba, etc. You could also get much faster if most of your work is matrix multiplication if you make use of libraries like ViennaCL and a modern C++ compiler.

Numpy, Scipy and a lot of other numerical libraries use Fortran for the underlying operations along with C. Because Fortran is just faster for such operations and will continue to be. Numba is still very much alpha. Julia is still immature for production (Good language from what I hear but still very much in development). Don't know if C++ can ever be as fast as Fortran because all fortran compilers are optimized for…

Intel also has C/C++ compilers which probably share optimizers and backend code generators with their Fortran compiler and shouldn't be worse. Ditto for 3rd party commercial vendors like PGI.

And, BTW, I have seen a case where PGI vastly outperformed GCC on the same code. So compilers matter.

Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#147

Post by simontcousins »

solutionyogi wrote: post #112
simontcousins wrote: post #108

My team switched an entire application from C# (~350k loc) to F# (~30k loc). Smaller team, smaller code base, fewer bugs, complete implementation of requirements, clearer code. The whole of the F# code base was less than the number of blank lines in the C# code base and a lot more fun to read and write. https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/2766#issuec...

Wow. I have been using C# for a long time and has dabbled in F# a little bit. And I know F# can help you reduce some boilerplate that C# requires but I have never seen reducing code base by 90 percent like in your case. Can you give us little bit more details? Eg 350k doesn't include blank lines, right? What did the application do? Is it a Windows service or a Web App or a command line program?

The app evaluated the expected income from Ancillary Service contracts in the UK energy market and subequently reconciled against actual income:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_services_(electric_p...

It comprised a windows server, a web app and a calculation engine.

As well as remorselessly removing boilerplate code using FP techniques the F# solution also allowed us to explore our way, via the REPL, to solving the problems we were faced with and come up with better ways of doing things. The clarity, concision and low ceremony of F# code allowed us to rapidly evaluate and change approaches if necessary.

I find getting into the flow of development much easier in a language that supports this exploratory approach to programming - leads to less rigid thinking.

Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#148

Post by BrandoElFollito »

dashundchen wrote: post #81
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #60

I am an amateur developer, mostly using python. I had from time to time to code a front-end in JS and it was a huge pain in the bottom (again, I am a real amateur). This until I discovered Vue.js which changed my life. This and lodash made me actually like JS and front-end programming. So this is an example what a framework did not help to improve code but actually made me choose in something else than the language I…

Would you be able to recommend any Vue tutorials/resources/projects you found useful while learning?

The docs on the site are very good. I would recommend taking an existing project of yours and rewrite it. This is what I did with my home dashboard.

I wrote a few frontends in my job (nothing off the shelf was suitable and I had simple needs). I then rewrote everything in Vue.

This is also the snell of having a hammer and everything looking like a nail but I have basic needs and do not have the time to learn 20 languages. Python and JS are a good combo for me.

Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#149

Post by BrandoElFollito »

tribby wrote: post #92
dashundchen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be able to recommend any Vue tutorials/resources/projects you found useful while learning?

I agree with the comment sibling recommending the docs -- they are good. maybe try building something with nuxt[1] first. nuxt a framework/static site generator build on top of vue (inspired by next.js for react). its conventions are easy to pick up. I find nuxt eliminates all the boilerplate and middleware I would normally have to write for a vue app with SSR (especially since vue-cli really only has a good client-s…

This looks absolutely fantastic. Thanks. I will have a closer look as soon as my family goes for vacation :)

Re: Ask HN: When has switching the language/framework made an important difference?

#150

Post by BrandoElFollito »

levthedev wrote: post #82
dashundchen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be able to recommend any Vue tutorials/resources/projects you found useful while learning?

All you need are the (excellent) docs! You can read the whole thing in like an hour or so. Onve you've read the docs, just start building.

Absolutely agreed. I went from zero (and very poor JS skills) to starting refactoring my app in one afternoon.
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