Another half baked wso2 product.
Could you please elaborate a bit, which part of the language you think half baked?
Ballerina, a language with structural type system
31–40 of 126 posts
Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why (do you think) is it only used there and hasn't made its way too the main stream (yet)?
Disclaimer: Huge personal hunch, might be down-voted to hell for writing this... I think that languages like this don't go mainstream because people like/want to write code , and anything that does not help to actually write code is seen as an hindrance. The main feedback I've heard about this kind of tool is "it's clunky, it's a pain to write code with". Guess what ? It's a good thing IMO. For this to go mainstream,…
Ballerina does NOT force you to write "visually". You can write normal code and NEVER look at a picture.
However, after you're done, if to see the flow of your entire program (not just one function) as a sequence diagram then you can get that done.
The language syntax is "normal" syntax and has all the power o a modern language. Try it and see- feedback welcome.
Disclaimer: I'm the one who started the project and leading it as the product manager now.
Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system
#33I've been to several dozen technology conferences the past two years and these folks show up with a fancy large booth and nice swag and I'm simply amazed at the presentation and effort they've put into this undertaking. My understanding is that the primary motivation all of this is consultancy work in India.
I'm the founder of WSO2 which developed Ballerina. Also the person who started the project and lead it.
WSO2 is an enterprise software product company with 500+ customers in 70+ countries and 600 employees globally.
We promoted Ballerina like that because we are proud of the work we do and wanted to show it off to people. You may not like the work we produce but trying to say its to get "consultancy work in India" is rather racist.
Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system
#34The absence of meaningful code samples on the front page, and the request that I install software on my computer to try a few lines of code, makes me highly doubt the future of this endeavour, outside of academia.
We had a playground widget but had to take it down because we were a bit swamped last few weeks and couldn't get it updated for this release.
A Go-like full screen online playground is coming.
Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system
#35They really should explain the motivation in the main site instead of just expecting me to download and experiment.
Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system
#36Every time a new programming language is announced, I go look at some of the example programs. This time I didn't even make it through "hello world" as I can't read the grey on very slightly lighter grey code. Please, if the makers are reading this, just make it look like it does in your editor, when you're reading and writing it.
Yeah sorry .. the styling on examples https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/by-example/ might be a bit much.
We'll work on it.
Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system
#37Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you please elaborate a bit, which part of the language you think half baked?
Can you execute OS exec with this language? I tried to do the integration with a legacy app and gave up.
Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system
#39Like other WSO2 stuff, Ballerina suffers from too many almost complete features. As I see it, they can hire dozens of coders in Sri Lanka, but don't have a good product management team that can turn a 95% complete feature into a market-ready one.
I'm the founder of WSO2. I'm from Sri Lanka. We have 100s of coders from Sri Lanka (not dozens). I'm the creator of Ballerina. I'm now its product manager.
Ballerina is in its first GA release. Please elaborate on what features you see as "almost complete"?
And regards to your comment about WSO2's inability to produce market-ready products, we have 500+ customers from all over the world for our products. What do we need to become "market-ready"?
Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the end of your quote, what's to toggle between? (I think it means that the code does clearly enough the interactions that you don't need a separate diagram, rather than that there's built in tooling to generate one, if that's the confusion.)
There actually is a built in tool to generate a sequence diagram. The language is designed with the idea that it should be possible to generate such a diagram for every program. The tool to generate diagram is currently part of the vscode extension for ballerina. It's documented here. https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/tools-ides/vscode-plugin/gra...
The way I read the docs though, it sounded like you could generate code from a sequence diagram - generating a diagram from code isn't that new or unique (albeit, still a handy feature!)