If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century • Hacker News Board

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#31

Post by j2kun » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #12

> Ultimately this: > FILE * test_file = fopen(“/tmp/test.txt”, “w+”); > Should become something like this: > create file /tmp/test.txt for input and output as test_file > Syntax highlighting should work instead of syntax notation just fine. I couldn't disagree more. The first example is easily scannable visually -- a variable is being created from a function call. I can tell because my eyes immediately notice the mid…

Indeed, there's a reason that SQL statements still need formatting and keyword capitalization hints to make it readable.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#32

Post by incadenza » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

This article is like a litmus year for who actually reads the full article.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#33

Post by defanor » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

The hidden twist itself is interesting, but the described features didn't sound like they incorporate any PLT advancements of the past decades, with the first one indeed reminding of older languages: I thought it's just somebody describing the language bits they like for some reason, and saying that they'd like new languages like that.

If they were more convincing, it would be surprising to see that they all were already present in an old and somewhat forgotten language. Though the overall article (and the conclusion in particular) seems to be more about rhetoric than about reasoning. I agree with the conclusion, but it doesn't seem to be backed well with (follow from) the rest of the article.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#34

Post by singularity2001 » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:22 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #4

Really, this is worse? FILE * test_file = fopen(“/tmp/test.txt”, “w+”); than create file /tmp/test.txt for input and output as test_file Yeah, remove the ; and duplication of type: let test_file = fopen(“/tmp/test.txt”, “w+”)

File test = open /tmp/test.txt for writing

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#35

Post by ACow_Adonis » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

Impossible wrote: post #19

This submission is kind of genius because it shows how often people don't finish reading articles. There are no spoiler tags on HN, but thr TLDR is the author is describing the design goals of COBOL, and is making a point that there is no programming language or environment that can solve all your problems. I slightly disagree in a "use the right tool for the right job" sense, but it clearly helps to understand your…

To be fair, half of us thought that the article was finished.

Don't blame us for not being told that you have to click on the survey at the bottom, and that when you do so, the next bit would magically appear...

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#36

Post by zekrioca » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

> But realistically, how often do you have to program high-performance computations? I suppose, unless you work in a narrow field of research and engineering that requires exactly that, not very often. And if you do, you have to use specialized hardware and compilers anyway. I’ll just presume, a typical 21st-century programmer don't have to solve differential equations very often.

Does the author know about all the efforts in this area, things such as Machine Learning and statistics? This type of argumentation is so... 20th century? :)

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#37

Post by orangecat » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

jchw wrote: post #25

I'm glad this took a turn because I was not following, AT ALL. But even that last conclusion I only sort of agree with. If they are suggesting Go and Rust and Kotlin bring nothing useful to the table, I suggest they reevaluate. I am way more productive writing Go than C++, Mozilla invented Rust literally to solve concurrency problems, and Kotlin saves you a ton of typing, which speaks on it's own. Yes there's hype. I…

Kotlin saves you a ton of typing

And more importantly, it saves time and focus when reading code. You don't have to manually parse dozens of lines to verify "yes, this is a standard value object".

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#38

Post by jacobolus » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

justinator wrote: post #14

crazygringo wrote: post #12

> Ultimately this: > FILE * test_file = fopen(“/tmp/test.txt”, “w+”); > Should become something like this: > create file /tmp/test.txt for input and output as test_file > Syntax highlighting should work instead of syntax notation just fine. I couldn't disagree more. The first example is easily scannable visually -- a variable is being created from a function call. I can tell because my eyes immediately notice the mid…

I think the OP perhaps wants to look at Apple Script?

Yes, this proposal is basically AppleScript.

AppleScript is (relatively) easy for non-programmers to read and understand, because it is built on natural language.

Unfortunately AppleScript is a huge pain to write, because as a programming language it is still quite strict about what type of syntax it will accept. It also is fairly limited, because speccing a natural language programming vocabulary/grammar gets increasingly difficult as you start adding features.

As a result even the best AppleScript programs are not concise at all, with limited use of abstraction. Most AppleScript programs are cobbled together by copy/pasting code found on the internet, and are full of bugs.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#39

Post by detaro » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

twtw wrote: post #20

Impossible wrote: post #19

This submission is kind of genius because it shows how often people don't finish reading articles. There are no spoiler tags on HN, but thr TLDR is the author is describing the design goals of COBOL, and is making a point that there is no programming language or environment that can solve all your problems. I slightly disagree in a "use the right tool for the right job" sense, but it clearly helps to understand your…

I don't think you can blame the people for reading all the words and deciding not to vote on the survey.

If you read all the words, wasn't it fairly obvious already without clicking to vote from the last few lines?

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#40

Post by reificator » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

> The language for the 21st century should be business oriented, English-like and not dependent on native types.

It is shocking to me how often the problem of "programming is difficult and time consuming and unintuitive" is to be resolved by "making programming languages more like English". The language is there as a tool to make programming easier!

Do you know how many times I've taken someone's keyboard to type a tiny snippet and then explained it in English with the code as reference? Why do you think I don't just explain it in English first? Because English is verbose and ambiguous and not suited to describing logic. That's what programming languages are for.

It's the same thing whenever someone makes a scratch clone but meant for real work. If you limit your scope enough, and you benefit from the visual layout, I think it can be a productivity win. Otherwise, they just tend to make the trivial stuff into drag and drop, and the easy stuff difficult or tedious.

Unreal Engine's material and animation blueprints satisfy the above criteria, and are a pleasure to work with IMO. But they're both laser focused on doing one thing. With materials, seeing the output preview of each stage of the pipeline is a great help. And with animations, it's essentially a state machine, so seeing it graphed out in front of you is how you'd want to prepare to write the code anyway. Both clear wins for having a visual layout, but I want to stress that these are exceptions to the rule.

EDIT: Also should bring up Inform7[1] as another example of a focused tool that benefits from not being code. If your goal is to write a text adventure, it makes sense to use prose to create it. It also somewhat benefits the authors who are typically more writers than engineers, but don't even think that means you can just sit down and start writing it without a learning phase.

[0]: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Rendering/Materia...

[1]: http://inform7.com/