Earlier quoted context omitted.
HARC no longer exists unfortunately.
I thought it was still on going? It’s still listed on YCR.
I'm also surprised at this. Did they all move over to dynamicland?
The Eve programming language project is winding down
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Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down
#82We 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.
I see an analogy in calculus. People learned it because Newton gave them a reason to. Consider finding a use case where the language lets you do something not otherwise possible. If your use case is successful, people will take note of its precursors. (If you can’t, explore your language as an academic might.)
Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are being a bit harsh. These were ambitious undertakings with high levels of risk going into them, which, I bet, were well known. I've struggled in this field for 10+ years now and there are lots of dark alley ways that end in walls. Then everyone constantly tells you this has already been done when, no, it really hasn't (at best, the technology is there but so piss poor designed that it isn't useful). If you rei…
As a side note, and as someone else working in this space, you do yourself a disservice by telling yourself work in this space is stagnant since SmallTalk. It’s not that programming ergonomics are stagnant, it’s that all of the gains have been made by professionals. And the tooling is nearly impossible to leverage for a beginner environment because all of the assumptions of a pro developer are built in to their desig…
None of those are interesting experiences beyond the command line. They represent exactly the stagnant thinking that we are fighting against. Especially GIT, it could have come out in the 70s with the interface it relies on. It makes me sad that people see this as progress.
It doesn’t take a rockstar to make progress here, and anyways, I’ve been relatively successful on the academic side (e.g. just got a 10 year influential paper award for my 2007 live programming paper). I don’t think Bret Victor failed so much as lost interest, and he accomplished a great deal in getting people interested in this area again. Chris hasn’t really failed either, he is still young. And let’s not forget all the ex-HARCers...
Also, not all of us see this as a make programming more accessible problem; e.g. that’s not my thing, I really want to improve programming en masse. But we all agree the existing way is a dead end and we need to experiment ei5h radically different approaches.
Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down
#84We 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.
I think the right answer is intermediate tools that don't even necessarily create programs, but give people reasons to use a compiler and learn that type of problem solving related to their current day to day needs.
Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down
#85This 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…
Perhaps, but it's pretty easy to make judgements from the sideline about what people should or shouldn't do. I was the PM on Visual Studio. I can assure the things I showed in Light Table weren't there. Nor were they in Eclipse, as I studied that as well. You can pick and choose any number of things from our work over the years and say "Hey, but this looks like that" - I'm sure it does, but the question is does it wo…
For whatever it's worth, I backed light table on kickstarter and as far as I'm concerned it was well worth the money. I got an interesting prototype editor which has had a big impact on the wider ecosystem (the swift playground comes particularly to mind). I've gotten to read your consistently interesting blog and watch you experiment with different pieces of the language design space.
I can't imagine how hard it must be to shut it down after all these years, but I know whatever comes next in PL and IDE design will owe your project a huge debt. Thank you for everything!
Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are being a bit harsh. These were ambitious undertakings with high levels of risk going into them, which, I bet, were well known. I've struggled in this field for 10+ years now and there are lots of dark alley ways that end in walls. Then everyone constantly tells you this has already been done when, no, it really hasn't (at best, the technology is there but so piss poor designed that it isn't useful). If you rei…
This is (in principle, at least) why we have public funding of basic research.
Which right now is mostly going to the deep learning train :(. There are some academics working in this area right now, Ravi Chugh, Phillip Guo, to name a couple.
Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down
#87We 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.
> We need to have a conversation about the possible paths to make programming more widely accessible. We've been doing this for as long as computers have existed and have made virtually no progress (pun intended) since 3GL languages. No other industry has ever tried as hard as ours has to make itself redundant. Programming is about as simple now as it will be for the foreseeable future, any simplification sacrifices…
I strongly disagree with this. Today, it is "think to program", but the computer is right there, it can help out a lot more beyond just interpreting the program you thought hard about writing. Instead, the computer can help us think, it might not be able to do the reasoning for us, but it can help us break it up into smaller pieces.
A nice analogy is the difference between Ultron, Hawkeye, and Iron Man. Ultron represents the singularity where computers just program for us; it will come someday but it isn't very interesting to us. Hawkeye, the "super" archer, is analogous to the programmer with advanced abstracting reasoning skills, he is amazing, but there just aren't going to be too many of him. Humans aren't getting much smarter in general.
Then there is Iron Man, who makes himself awesome by using technology, from his power suit to his holographic design environment and interactive voice assistant. That is the sweet spot for us.
Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
HARC no longer exists unfortunately.
I thought it was still on going? It’s still listed on YCR.
Bret Victor's group is still going (they got their own funding); I believe John Maloney (of Morphic/Etoys fame) is also still going with his own funding. The rest of us are all gone...
Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if programming is just hard?
Building bridges is hard. But it's a lot easier now than it was five hundred years ago. There's no general reason to think hard things can't get easier.
If it is easier, it could be so because there's less inventing of new procedures and more following existing procedures (that is there's less "programming").
Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if programming is just hard?
Building bridges is hard. But it's a lot easier now than it was five hundred years ago. There's no general reason to think hard things can't get easier.
Programming is much much easier now than it was in the 80s! It's been years since I actually had to write any code myself - computers do it all for us now. Amazing things, these "compiler" programs.