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

The Eve programming language project is winding down

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 270 posts

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#31

Post by seanmcdirmid »

juancampa wrote: post #25
chubot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious what's the general space that Eve is in? Programming environments for non-programmers? I applaud the ambitious efforts of both Eve and Light Table -- it's definitely worth trying, and the negative result is valuable too. But part of me wonders if they were tackling too big a problem, or at least MARKETING a (potential) solution to too big a problem. IIRC, I believe they figured out through talking to use…

Really agree with that last part about framing it as a better spreadsheet first. What's the language you're working on? care to share a link?

The spreadsheet idea is what I'm trying out ATM (hopefully will have a good demo in a month or two). I like Fowler's view on this from 2009:

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/IllustrativeProgramming.html

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#32

Post by jonathanedwards »

We need to have a conversation about the possible paths to make programming more widely accessible. Chris saw the problem clearly and tried to fix it. Respect. I am most impressed with the number of iterations he was able to crank in the context of a startup. But ultimately a startup may not be the best place to start, because low-end programming is not a short-term growth play. We have to play the long game.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#33

Post by ModernMech »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #26
chubot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious what's the general space that Eve is in? Programming environments for non-programmers? I applaud the ambitious efforts of both Eve and Light Table -- it's definitely worth trying, and the negative result is valuable too. But part of me wonders if they were tackling too big a problem, or at least MARKETING a (potential) solution to too big a problem. IIRC, I believe they figured out through talking to use…

> . How many people in the world have the IQ to write a program of say 100 lines that does something useful? Have the IQ necessary? Probably 90-95%. Have the training? Significantly lower. The training required consists of both being taught a language/medium to express thought it, and being taught a structured cause and event method of thinking. There's this incredibly pervasive view in a lot of areas that programmin…

This is actually the thesis behind Eve. Humans are incredible problem solvers, and we did it for millennia without computers. Computers are great tools for problem solving, but for many problems they are obtuse not because they are inherently hard, but because we have made them unnecessarily so. Take away all that ancillary complexity, and you're left with a tool and the essence of a problem. Most reasonably intelligent people should be able to take it from there.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#35

Post by chubot »

juancampa wrote: post #25
chubot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious what's the general space that Eve is in? Programming environments for non-programmers? I applaud the ambitious efforts of both Eve and Light Table -- it's definitely worth trying, and the negative result is valuable too. But part of me wonders if they were tackling too big a problem, or at least MARKETING a (potential) solution to too big a problem. IIRC, I believe they figured out through talking to use…

Really agree with that last part about framing it as a better spreadsheet first. What's the language you're working on? care to share a link?

I've always wanted to make a programming language, but I just tell everyone it's a shell, since that is more understandable and less "threatening" [1]:

http://www.oilshell.org/

The thinking is that if I fail to make a new programming language, which is the 99% case, then at least I can make a "better bash", which I know people will use if it works.

It was on the front page last week, although this is the second time it has become a flame war between sys admins and developers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16154438

I haven't gotten a chance to work on the Oil language part much, but I wrote a little bit about it here:

http://www.oilshell.org/blog/tags.html?tag=oil-language#oil-...

Anyway, I think the shell has a lot of potential for beginners because it's the first "language" you'll encounter when booting up a PC. My first "language" was actually MS-DOS batch files!!! (Although note that the project isn't prioritizing beginners over experts.)

The shell is just stuck with decades of legacy, to the point where people actively avoid it (as shown by the HN thread). But the only way to "kill bash" is to reimplement it, which I have almost done! So now that I have a clean architecture / prototype, the plan is to speed it up, and evolve it into a different language without the legacy.

There will also be lots of extensions, like a built-in awk paradigm of streaming, and a built-in make paradigm of incremental and parallel computation, etc. There are a lot of good concepts in Unix, which are not even available in Python, but they're hidden behind these crappy 70's style macro languages. It's interesting that the development of shell, awk, and make were about the time when people started figuring out to write parsers! Historically, awk and yacc were almost co-developed.

If you're unfamiliar with shell as an interesting language that's distinct from Perl/Python, the he "shell-the-good-parts" tag might help: http://www.oilshell.org/blog/tags.html?tag=shell-the-good-pa...

[1] I recently reposted this "programming language checklist" which summarizes what I think of new programming languages :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/7mcsx...

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#36

Post by steelmanning »

gojomo wrote: post #16
steelmanning wrote: post #14

This is the same man, Chris Granger, that did a Kickstarter for Light Table, a so-called "next generation IDE," with promotional materials touting as new and revolutionary features that had been standard in IntelliJ, Visual Studio, and even Eclipse for years: http://chrononsystems.com/blog/light-table-concept-vs-realit... Light Table was also ultimately abandoned before completion. Perhaps Granger should rein in his…

Can you describe the right-sized ambitions and effective delegation practices that have served you well in your career, perhaps with examples of the resulting successes?

When you have a failed Kickstarter under your belt, that's a good indication you need to aim lower.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#37

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

eindiran wrote: post #9
gexla wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/9kn745/eve-online-millio...

That was a pretty anti-climactic outcome: "Million dollar battle deals out $3300 in damage"...

It's always the inverse.

You'll see a small frigate brawl break out into a clusterfuck but once you see major announcements, everyone's gonna get blueballed.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#38

Post by cmontella »

jonathanedwards wrote: post #32

We need to have a conversation about the possible paths to make programming more widely accessible. Chris saw the problem clearly and tried to fix it. Respect. I am most impressed with the number of iterations he was able to crank in the context of a startup. But ultimately a startup may not be the best place to start, because low-end programming is not a short-term growth play. We have to play the long game.

> because low-end programming is not a short-term growth play. We have to play the long game.

This is true, and one of the reasons we opted to look at the acquisition route rather than raising another round; with raising another round, a whole lot of expectations would be attached to that surrounding growth, while we were still operating heavily in a research capacity.

Languages like Rust and Go that have nice corporate incubators are a great model, but these languages tend to serve their corporate benefactors in some direct way. It's hard to pitch a greenfield project like Eve, because there's no real great way to quantify the benefits of a language before it's been fully realized.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#39

Post by WalterBright »

jonathanedwards wrote: post #32

We need to have a conversation about the possible paths to make programming more widely accessible. Chris saw the problem clearly and tried to fix it. Respect. I am most impressed with the number of iterations he was able to crank in the context of a startup. But ultimately a startup may not be the best place to start, because low-end programming is not a short-term growth play. We have to play the long game.

Yes, there's no doubt that developing a new programming language is the long game :-)

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#40

Post by ModernMech »

steelmanning wrote: post #36
gojomo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you describe the right-sized ambitions and effective delegation practices that have served you well in your career, perhaps with examples of the resulting successes?

When you have a failed Kickstarter under your belt, that's a good indication you need to aim lower.

How was Light Table a failed kickstarter? It got funded and Chris delivered exactly what he said he would. You can go and use Light Table today. The reason he stopped working on it was the realization that his ultimate vision for Light Table is something exactly like Eve, and would be impossible with languages like JS, Pyhton, and Clojure.
Post reply on HN