Finish your stuff • Hacker News Board

Re: Finish your stuff

#101

Post by kmicklas » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 12:58 AM UTC

Oxitendwe wrote: post #88

Ericson2314 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not on the stated list, but null pointers is a classic expedient unsafe shortcut for those too lazy to design a better type system. C is full of such shortcuts (c.f. Algol 68).

First of all, that has nothing to do with the UNIX philosophy, second of all, it has nothing to do with type theory. Anyone is perfectly capable of implementing a Maybe/Option/whatever type in C, allocating it on the heap (because you wouldn't be able to return it if it were stack-allocated), and then returning a pointer to it, whereupon C's actual type system would happily complain about mismatched types if you trie…

> Anyone is perfectly capable of implementing a Maybe/Option/whatever type in C

C doesn't even have parametric polymorphism, I'm not sure how you're imagining this can be done.

Re: Finish your stuff

#102

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 1:04 AM UTC

kmicklas wrote: post #101

Oxitendwe wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, that has nothing to do with the UNIX philosophy, second of all, it has nothing to do with type theory. Anyone is perfectly capable of implementing a Maybe/Option/whatever type in C, allocating it on the heap (because you wouldn't be able to return it if it were stack-allocated), and then returning a pointer to it, whereupon C's actual type system would happily complain about mismatched types if you trie…

> Anyone is perfectly capable of implementing a Maybe/Option/whatever type in C C doesn't even have parametric polymorphism, I'm not sure how you're imagining this can be done.

Parametric polymorphism is needed to implement “Maybe” as a generic type that can be applied to another type, but you can implement individual concrete Maybe X types without it.

You could possibly use macro programming to do it “generically” at a level outside the type system.

Re: Finish your stuff

#103

Post by Ericson2314 » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

Oxitendwe wrote: post #88

Ericson2314 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not on the stated list, but null pointers is a classic expedient unsafe shortcut for those too lazy to design a better type system. C is full of such shortcuts (c.f. Algol 68).

First of all, that has nothing to do with the UNIX philosophy, second of all, it has nothing to do with type theory. Anyone is perfectly capable of implementing a Maybe/Option/whatever type in C, allocating it on the heap (because you wouldn't be able to return it if it were stack-allocated), and then returning a pointer to it, whereupon C's actual type system would happily complain about mismatched types if you trie…

> Anyone is perfectly capable of implementing a Maybe/Option/whatever type in C

1. No parametric polymorphism, but I'll let you move the goal post with us macro-ing a bunch of monomorphized nullable pointer types. It still sucks because

2. No static checks against nullable values in the non-Maybe case, no ergonomic pattern matching in the maybe-case

Moreover, let's be real. Nobody writes new C in a vacuum, and given that that ecosystem is very mature, there's no changing course now. But safety techniques are only as good as their weakest link---their use must be enforced everywhere. The damage is done and irreparable with C.

Re: Finish your stuff

#104

Post by euphoria » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

googamooga wrote: post #35

Out of the frustration with AMQP I've started my own ZeroMQ project. I doubt that Martin was the sole initiator of ZeroMQ project. I think that late Pieter Hintjens, the original author of AMQP, deserves some credit as well, at least out of respect[1][2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeroMQ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens Disclaimer: I knew Pieter personally and met him several times at his…

Regardless of whether you doubt it, it is an accurate claim. I remember following the development in real time, having used AMQP and ZeroMQ during 2007-2010.

I am not doubting that Pieter Hintjens deserves respect, but the ZeroMQ project was started by Martin. He wrote the vast majority of the code for the first two years, none of which was written by Pieter. Martin's company owned the copyright for the first 2 years, before it was purchased by Pieter's company. The only messages I see on the ZeroMQ mailing list from Pieter in those days are messages of congratulations and enthusiasm. I know Pieter and Martin worked together at iMatix, and that some of the ideas for ZeroMQ spun out of their mutual work with AMQP, but it is fair to say Martin started the ZeroMQ project.

I understand how Pieter presented things, but I think he did so with a revisionist viewpoint. I don't mean to disparage him or downplay the immense impact he had on the later success of ZeroMQ though.