Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The next wave of programming languages

radar.oreilly.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: The next wave of programming languages

#61

Post by stcredzero »

joubert wrote: post #47
stcredzero wrote: post #42

The dynamic/compiled distinction needs to go away. Combine a simple syntax with very rapid compilation with LLVM, Type Inference, and very advanced emulator-based debugging, and there would be no need to have anything like Smalltalk/Perl/Python/Ruby any more. Instead of dynamic Duck Typing, you'd have Go's version, with auto-magic help from type inference. The emulator-based debugger could subsume many of the capabil…

The dynamic/compiled distinction needs to go away dynamic / compiled are orthogonal. CL is dynamic and gets compiled as you enter in the REPL.

Pretty much the same with Smalltalk, but people still make this distinction in their minds. That's part of my point. The distinction no longer even has so much basis in the actual organization of code and runtimes!

Re: The next wave of programming languages

#62

Post by strlen »

gcampbell wrote: post #54
strlen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lot of people claim that STM in Clojure is the big reason to use it. To me it's been a lot simpler: a) I want some macros to use for JVM-based projects b) I like using Emacs + SLIME (it's the best development environment, period). Unfortunately the noise of Rails fanboys migrating to it with their usual laundry list of complaints ("no IDE support", "no good web framework") is annoying. I have nothing against Ruby in…

Are "Rails fanboys" really complaining about lack of IDE support? I was under the impression that IDEs weren't especially popular among Rails programmers (as compared to Vim and TextMate).

Yeah, I should probably have been less vitriolic and more refined. The IDE complaints mostly come from Java migrants and people who are looking out for the newbies. Honestly, using an IDE (or at the other extreme, vi) for a Lisp is like using Latin to write in Russian: you can do it, but you're better off if you take some time initially to learn Cyrillics.

(Doug Hoyte disagrees with me on the vi point, arguing in his book that Lisp is expressive enough not to require any editor support. I respectfully disagree.)

Re: The next wave of programming languages

#63

Post by nagrom »

euroclydon wrote: post #55
vollmond wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why would having an XBox in your home be a problem? I was homeschooled (though only in high school) with several consoles in our house, and it doesn't seem to have been a problem. I wasn't allowed to goof off school time on video games any more than I could have played my Game Boy in a public school classroom. edit: I suppose a more clear question would be: What is it specific to homeschooling that…

I'm trying to avoid constructing the school-time/video-game-time dichotomy because to do so would just mean I was a missionary for consumerism. Think about it: Why should I reinforce to my children, from an early age, that videos and such are fun and learning is not fun; consuming entertainment is what you want to do, and productive work is what you don't want to do, but rather have to do so you then can consume ente…

Maybe I misunderstand, but surely Kodu is a fantastic advert for your ideas, and you should be welcoming it? Here's a fun thing to do that is learning and on a platform with which your kids' friends will be familiar.

I can understand that the balance between Halo 3 app types and Kodu app types is the wrong way around from your perspective, but the XBox does make it fairly cheap and simple to understand how the games are written and provides you with the chance to show your kids how the magic tricks are done, so to speak. I'd have thought that was a good thing :-)

Kudos on educating your kids on what you think is important though; I think it's great when people really think through education and put a lot of effort into it.

Re: The next wave of programming languages

#65

Post by Daniel_Newby »

euroclydon wrote: post #55
vollmond wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why would having an XBox in your home be a problem? I was homeschooled (though only in high school) with several consoles in our house, and it doesn't seem to have been a problem. I wasn't allowed to goof off school time on video games any more than I could have played my Game Boy in a public school classroom. edit: I suppose a more clear question would be: What is it specific to homeschooling that…

I'm trying to avoid constructing the school-time/video-game-time dichotomy because to do so would just mean I was a missionary for consumerism. Think about it: Why should I reinforce to my children, from an early age, that videos and such are fun and learning is not fun; consuming entertainment is what you want to do, and productive work is what you don't want to do, but rather have to do so you then can consume ente…

"Why should I reinforce to my children, from an early age, that videos and such are fun and learning is not fun; ..."

That's my question. By banning something with an iron fist, that is exactly the lesson you are teaching. You are putting video games into the same category as drain opener and power tools.

The lesson needed is that there is a time and place for everything, and that deliberate control and planning of activity is valuable. Self-control is learned by practice, not by having a helicopter parent prevent the opportunity to make the choice.

And anyway, planning and self-control are mainly driven by the maturation schedule of the brain. Before age 11 or so (in Caucasians), the frontal lobes simply are not active enough to accept much logic. After that age, the ability to plan and focus concentration develops almost automatically. (One school even did an experiment where math was not taught until that age. There did not appear to be significant bad effects.)

"These days, media is designed to be sticky and most media is driven by advertisements, ..."

You have confused cause with effect. Most content is appealing because people who make unappealing content go broke and stop making it. Survivor bias means that those who sing for their supper have a tendency to create content based on emotional appeal rather than abstract notions of value, and this is equally true for textbook authors, architects, and medieval bards.

Re: The next wave of programming languages

#66

Post by AndrejM »

AndrejM wrote: post #52
johkra wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's indeed very impressive. I hope they are recording and putting the videos online.

I've just sent them an email asking this question. Waiting for the reply..

Update: Just got the reply, there will be Video. Yay!

Re: The next wave of programming languages

#67

Post by twopoint718 »

Scriptor wrote: post #56
gcampbell wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are "Rails fanboys" really complaining about lack of IDE support? I was under the impression that IDEs weren't especially popular among Rails programmers (as compared to Vim and TextMate).

I don't think strlen is being accurate by saying its "Ruby fanboys" who are the source of a lot of criticism. Clojure does have a lot of former Java developers who aren't used to non-IDE development on the JVM. Others don't like the apparent complexity Emacs comes with (Emacs, Slime, Swank, Paredit? All I want to do is enter some ascii characters and run a compiler!) That said, I think Clojure is improving in those f…

I think there's at least one clojure plug-in for each of the main Java IDEs:

    Enclojure (NetBeans)
    Counterclockwise (Eclipse)
    La Clojure (JetBrains)
The other thing that has really improved immensely is "project management" (right term?) provided by Leiningen. Now you can basically do "lein new proj_name", then edit a simple config file in the created directory and do "lein deps" to get all the packages that you referenced.

Re: The next wave of programming languages

#68

Post by ShardPhoenix »

WilliamLP wrote: post #49
colonelxc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was playing with Clojure this last weekend, and so far have enjoyed it. I ran through a dozen or so project euler problems, but am now looking for something that takes longer than 10 lines of code to complete. HN, what other projects do you do to familiarize yourself with a new language?

Write a game. ASCII Tetris or Pac Man or Space Invaders would be fine. Whether that is a simple afternoon activity or a somewhat epic undertaking might tell you something about the language.

I've been writing a couple of small games with Clojure + Swing as a way of learning Clojure, and it's been very smooth so far. I haven't even touched concurrency or macros yet but the basic language feels even more consistent and logical than Ruby.

Re: The next wave of programming languages

#69

Post by euroclydon »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #65
euroclydon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to avoid constructing the school-time/video-game-time dichotomy because to do so would just mean I was a missionary for consumerism. Think about it: Why should I reinforce to my children, from an early age, that videos and such are fun and learning is not fun; consuming entertainment is what you want to do, and productive work is what you don't want to do, but rather have to do so you then can consume ente…

"Why should I reinforce to my children, from an early age, that videos and such are fun and learning is not fun; ..." That's my question. By banning something with an iron fist, that is exactly the lesson you are teaching. You are putting video games into the same category as drain opener and power tools. The lesson needed is that there is a time and place for everything, and that deliberate control and planning of a…

Hey thanks for your comments. I though of the backlash that comes from denying something, as you say, with an iron fist. I intend to shape a culture in my home by addition of a bunch of activities which I feel will be beneficial, rather than simply subtracting video games and such.

As to me confusing cause with effect, I though of that too, and I think that the purveyors of media entertainment aren't simply providing what people want. Why do your crops die on Farmville if you don't log in for a few days? Is that what users want, for their crops to die?

Re: The next wave of programming languages

#70

Post by mquander »

tansey wrote: post #34
mquander wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how you're using the word "concentration" here, but playing an FPS (for example) usually demands that you pay attention to something new every few seconds, and definitely does not encourage lengthy focus or sustained thought. I think tends to be even more true for console games than games in general. In any case, I doubt it's so much that video games are detrimental and more that you ought to have a hobb…

Maybe something like UT or CS, where it's all over in 3 minutes, that's true. I remember being a kid and playing games like Tomb Raider where you would have to really think and work hard to unlock puzzles. Even games that offered you the opportunity to just fly through them usually had some form of deeper gameplay. For instance, SF Rush was all about things flashing by really fast, but the real challenge was to colle…

You know, that's a pretty good point. Most console games have some "completionist" aspects that usually encourage some degree of cleverness and persistence, if nothing else. I know that I always enjoyed that aspect when I was a kid, although I don't know if it's the prevailing mindset.
Post reply on HN