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Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

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Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#51

Post by adjkant »

maxhallinan wrote: post #48
adjkant wrote: post #42

An interesting tangent I think about sometimes: I think when people think about "programmers/developers" vs "computer scientists", this is where the difference could really show up in the future. A developer who knows how to code and hack may not have the skill/design knowledge to properly create a language/DSL, perhaps making a monster in the process. A well trained computer scientist (academic, self taught, doesn't…

> A developer who knows how to code and hack may not have the skill/design knowledge to properly create a language/DSL, perhaps making a monster in the process. A well trained computer scientist (academic, self taught, doesn't matter) should have those tools and more importantly the design know how. The author of Beautiful Racket, Matthew Butterick, is a lawyer and a typographer. He is not a computer scientist. And y…

Why wouldn't the author qualify as a self taught computer scientist though? To me your point more of a statement on the accessibility of computer science first, and I do completely agree that the accessibility is important, which the Racket/HtDP ecosystem does pretty well with.

That said, there's many ways to write code and learn to code, and I think of the web programming bootcamp style or the cookie cutter college grads who go through four years learning how to program in X language to work at fancy company Y. My point is that many routes are just not focusing on the higher level design skills that I think are needed to make good libraries/frameworks/DSL's.

To clarify, I'm not saying you have to be a PL expert, simply good at program and language design, which I think is what lacks in many places and could create such a division. That skill is/should be accessible to everyone.

Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#52

Post by j_m_b »

mpweiher wrote: post #3

About a decade ago, I would have agreed with this 100%, and I still am fascinated and, quite frankly, awed by Racket and LOP (and looking forward to Racket Fest 2019 here in Berlin[1]). But. (You knew there was a "but"). While I don't quite agree with the assertion that with the right tooling (so: this tooling), creating a language is as easy as creating a library, I don't think it would solve our problems even if it…

>making things because we can, not because we should or they're good

"Macros are catnip to a certain type of developer"

This is the trap of macros and LOP approaches. This development approach often leads to code that makes sense to nobody in the world except the original developer. There are a lot of genius pieces of code out there using macros and DSLs, but there is also a lot of spaghetti code with a side of Macro meatballs.

Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#53

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

I like his style of writing and how elegant and powerful LOP is. The jsonic snippet is insane (in a good way). In the wrong hands or for the wrong job it could lead to a security disaster though. Still pretty cool to be able to think out of the box like this. Makes me rethink totally the way we do things and why.

  #lang jsonic
  // a line comment
  [
    @$ 'null $@,
    @$ (* 6 7) $@,
    @$ (= 2 (+ 1 1)) $@,
    @$ (list "array" "of" "strings") $@,
    @$ (hash 'key-1 'null
             'key-2 (even? 3)
             'key-3 (hash 'subkey 21)) $@
  ]

Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#54

Post by agumonkey »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #53

I like his style of writing and how elegant and powerful LOP is. The jsonic snippet is insane (in a good way). In the wrong hands or for the wrong job it could lead to a security disaster though. Still pretty cool to be able to think out of the box like this. Makes me rethink totally the way we do things and why. #lang jsonic // a line comment [ @$ 'null $@, @$ (* 6 7) $@, @$ (= 2 (+ 1 1)) $@, @$ (list "array" "of" "…

methinks a lot of the programming world at the interface (semantics/syntactic/ergonomic) is .. implicit tree processing.

see html encoding through functions, or kotlin builders, or json dsl ..

Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#55

Post by galfarragem »

adjkant wrote: post #51
maxhallinan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A developer who knows how to code and hack may not have the skill/design knowledge to properly create a language/DSL, perhaps making a monster in the process. A well trained computer scientist (academic, self taught, doesn't matter) should have those tools and more importantly the design know how. The author of Beautiful Racket, Matthew Butterick, is a lawyer and a typographer. He is not a computer scientist. And y…

Why wouldn't the author qualify as a self taught computer scientist though? To me your point more of a statement on the accessibility of computer science first, and I do completely agree that the accessibility is important, which the Racket/HtDP ecosystem does pretty well with. That said, there's many ways to write code and learn to code, and I think of the web programming bootcamp style or the cookie cutter college…

I never understood why CS people are so afraid of non-CS people touching language development. They hide the keys as much as possible so nobody but the predestinates can touch it. Racket gives that key. Despite that few people will use it (probably only the most prepared) and if these languages hacks are completely non-sense they'll fail. The world will not suffer much with this process.

Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#56

Post by karmakaze »

black-tea wrote: post #9
hardwaregeek wrote: post #2

I was thinking recently about why I find programming languages so interesting. The answer I came up with was that programming languages allow you to create your own reality. You get to define how things work in this reality. Want functions to be values that can be arguments and return values? Sure! Want a lot of crazy symbols to do complicated math? Go for it! Want everything to be dynamic? Why not. The caveat that c…

Yeah, that's what I like about languages like Lisp and to a lesser extent Python and, conversely, why I dislike languages like Go.

The worst is when people do use Go to make their own reality. It's not meant for that and it's never pretty.

Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#57

Post by amelius »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #2

I was thinking recently about why I find programming languages so interesting. The answer I came up with was that programming languages allow you to create your own reality. You get to define how things work in this reality. Want functions to be values that can be arguments and return values? Sure! Want a lot of crazy symbols to do complicated math? Go for it! Want everything to be dynamic? Why not. The caveat that c…

The problem is that people often create languages that are basically the same as existing languages; no new concepts. New languages are usually a grab-bag of features found in C, Java, Lisp and/or Haskell.

Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#58

Post by kod »

galfarragem wrote: post #55
adjkant wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't the author qualify as a self taught computer scientist though? To me your point more of a statement on the accessibility of computer science first, and I do completely agree that the accessibility is important, which the Racket/HtDP ecosystem does pretty well with. That said, there's many ways to write code and learn to code, and I think of the web programming bootcamp style or the cookie cutter college…

I never understood why CS people are so afraid of non-CS people touching language development. They hide the keys as much as possible so nobody but the predestinates can touch it. Racket gives that key. Despite that few people will use it (probably only the most prepared) and if these languages hacks are completely non-sense they'll fail. The world will not suffer much with this process.

If anything "CS people" are less afraid than they should be, given the demonstrated popularity of horrible retrograde languages designed by people who didn't know what they were doing.

Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#59

Post by karmakaze »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #2

I was thinking recently about why I find programming languages so interesting. The answer I came up with was that programming languages allow you to create your own reality. You get to define how things work in this reality. Want functions to be values that can be arguments and return values? Sure! Want a lot of crazy symbols to do complicated math? Go for it! Want everything to be dynamic? Why not. The caveat that c…

This is exactly why I got into programming, to make my own realities in then-current 8-bit games. I've since switched to this more abstract endeavour which gives the same satisfaction without realizing this being the reason. I'm also holding out for a VR title that can showcase this aspect rather than a horror in SciFi backdrop.

Re: Why Language-Oriented Programming? Why Racket?

#60

Post by maxhallinan »

adjkant wrote: post #51
maxhallinan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A developer who knows how to code and hack may not have the skill/design knowledge to properly create a language/DSL, perhaps making a monster in the process. A well trained computer scientist (academic, self taught, doesn't matter) should have those tools and more importantly the design know how. The author of Beautiful Racket, Matthew Butterick, is a lawyer and a typographer. He is not a computer scientist. And y…

Why wouldn't the author qualify as a self taught computer scientist though? To me your point more of a statement on the accessibility of computer science first, and I do completely agree that the accessibility is important, which the Racket/HtDP ecosystem does pretty well with. That said, there's many ways to write code and learn to code, and I think of the web programming bootcamp style or the cookie cutter college…

Ok, I think I read more into your first comment than you actually said.

>many routes are just not focusing on the higher level design skills that I think are needed to make good libraries/frameworks/DSL's.

I have observed that too. But I don't think this is about who is and isn't a computer scientist, whether self-taught or formally trained. I think it's more a change in the way people relate to programming languages. Perhaps programming languages were commonly assumed to be principally an academic topic. Perhaps it's not that more people are becoming computer scientists but that more people are finding non-academic ways to relate to programming language design. I think what Butterick did was to build the tool he needed to do a job (write a book). So language design becomes just like any other form of hacking.

>Why wouldn't the author qualify as a self taught computer scientist though?

Butterick himself is adamant that he is a lay person. He compares himself to a "squirrel in a ferrari": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMz09jYOgoc And that's his point in that talk - Racket makes it possible for even the lay person to build the language they need.

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