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The Bosque Programming Language

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71–80 of 178 posts

Re: The Bosque Programming Language

#71
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally would welcome a new language that gives me full-spectrum dependent types with great tooling and moderate performance. I'd propose to have a look at Swift. It is very similar to Rust in many aspects (particularly the type system), with slower performance (due to some of the abstractions). The tooling on macOS is already really good, on Linux it is getting there, and on Windows the next release will add…

Swift is just C++ with rubberized corners. Distinctly “meh” as a language in its own right, embarrassingly knotty around its ObjC bridging (there’s a basic impedance mismatch between those two worlds), and certainly doesn’t have anything as powerful as dependent types.

> embarrassingly knotty around its ObjC bridging (there’s a basic impedance mismatch between those two worlds)

I think they've done an incredible job with their ObjC interop, given said mismatch.

But you're right — the person above who said that

> The world has enough cookie cutter procedural and OOP languages.

definitely isn't looking for Swift.

Re: The Bosque Programming Language

#72
post #70
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I'm writing this, I spent X hours trying to find where my C project was leaking memory. Turns out one of the openssl pointers needed to be freed explicitly, which was my fault from having just seen their docs and them not explicitly showing so. Point is, with Rust this wouldn't be a thing. I wouldn't have to compile my program with a number of clang flags and then run the sanitizers and try to fish out where this…

Yes, and Rust doesn't protect you from memory leaks, BTW, although it does make them less likely. The overall value of a language can only be evaluated after years and many projects. My personal favorite to replace C/C++ is, by far, Zig, but I can't claim that it's the one to beat because it's years away from proving its worth, as are Nim, Rust, and, well, Bosque, I guess. Fashion forums like HN can pass judgment qui…

Let me clarify, in this actual case it would have. In Rust, memory that gets allotted in a function are freed when they go out of scope. So function returns -> stuff gets freed unless explicitly telling compiler not to.

I haven't seen Zig and I'll check it out. But some of the "fanfare" is necessary to get people involved and things built. Many other langs and projects that are technically worthwhile never get any of it and just languish.

Re: The Bosque Programming Language

#73
post #33
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain some further things about this languages? 1. How does the GC work? It says "novel reference counting" does that mean it leaks cycles or handles them (either by also tracing or preventing them statically)? 2. Is that the only thing it does to provide a C++-like "resource efficient and predictable runtime"? After all, that's basically Swift (or Python+static types). I think the main improvement that C++…

Actually that was already a thing in Mesa/Cedar, Modula-3, Oberon language family and Eiffel. Sadly Java has not taken this into account, nor AOT support out of the box, and now it is catching up with it.

Eiffel does not enforce preconditions at compile time. What are you referring to?

Re: The Bosque Programming Language

#74

Looks like Stainless Scala, mixed with Rust, and given a C++ syntax. This mix looks interesting as such. But of course Wadler's law applies: Why THIS syntax? Looks like a blast-from-the-past, bloatty and complex. Modern languages go mostly for some more lightweight look-and-feel. Usually more "pythonic". This would be imo also here the better idea.

I'm not sure how it supports "modern cloud developers, coming from say a TypeScript/Node stack" with that syntax.

Re: The Bosque Programming Language

#77
post #68

At this point any new systems language aiming at productivity has to prove itself not just superior to C++, but superior to Rust, without being significantly worse in any aspect. It’s already suspicious by virtue of having a hand-wavy "Int" type (what size/signedness is that?) and it appears to be object-oriented (so we have to rely on compiler optimisations to remove dynamic dispatch) and garbage-collected (so by de…

> has to prove itself not just superior to C++, but superior to Rust ... and Zig and Nim and D, I guess? None of them are seeing enough usage to even score them meaningfully against C++. The incumbents are C/C++, and there's no one else within two orders of magnitude. Just experiments at various stages; some are still in the lab, others have started some field trials, but that's about it.

... and Pascal !

Many languages are superior to C/C++

C/C++ just wins from the amount of available libraries and high-quality implementations.

Re: The Bosque Programming Language

#78
post #70
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I'm writing this, I spent X hours trying to find where my C project was leaking memory. Turns out one of the openssl pointers needed to be freed explicitly, which was my fault from having just seen their docs and them not explicitly showing so. Point is, with Rust this wouldn't be a thing. I wouldn't have to compile my program with a number of clang flags and then run the sanitizers and try to fish out where this…

Yes, and Rust doesn't protect you from memory leaks, BTW, although it does make them less likely. The overall value of a language can only be evaluated after years and many projects. My personal favorite to replace C/C++ is, by far, Zig, but I can't claim that it's the one to beat because it's years away from proving its worth, as are Nim, Rust, and, well, Bosque, I guess. Fashion forums like HN can pass judgment qui…

Indeed, at the end of the day there are certain domains where they are unavoidable, and regardless of countless rants from our side, those are the tools that get picked when one of said domains needs to be addressed.

Given your line of work, why not Java itself, on an hypothetical future where Valhalla is done, and AOT is a standard feature in equal footing with JIT capabilities/performance?

Re: The Bosque Programming Language

#79
post #78
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and Rust doesn't protect you from memory leaks, BTW, although it does make them less likely. The overall value of a language can only be evaluated after years and many projects. My personal favorite to replace C/C++ is, by far, Zig, but I can't claim that it's the one to beat because it's years away from proving its worth, as are Nim, Rust, and, well, Bosque, I guess. Fashion forums like HN can pass judgment qui…

Indeed, at the end of the day there are certain domains where they are unavoidable, and regardless of countless rants from our side, those are the tools that get picked when one of said domains needs to be addressed. Given your line of work, why not Java itself, on an hypothetical future where Valhalla is done, and AOT is a standard feature in equal footing with JIT capabilities/performance?

Maybe, but I'm allowed to like more than one language, no? :)

But seriously, I don't think AOT can ever match a JIT on peak performance without reducing the abstraction level and significantly increasing programmer burden, and much of Java's design is around "we automatically turn RAM into speed." It's a great value proposition for huge swathes of the software industry, but I don't think it's necessarily the best strategy for niches that require performance and are RAM-constrained.

I like Java and I like low-level programming even though it requires more effort regardless of language.

Re: The Bosque Programming Language

#80
post #72
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and Rust doesn't protect you from memory leaks, BTW, although it does make them less likely. The overall value of a language can only be evaluated after years and many projects. My personal favorite to replace C/C++ is, by far, Zig, but I can't claim that it's the one to beat because it's years away from proving its worth, as are Nim, Rust, and, well, Bosque, I guess. Fashion forums like HN can pass judgment qui…

Let me clarify, in this actual case it would have. In Rust, memory that gets allotted in a function are freed when they go out of scope. So function returns -> stuff gets freed unless explicitly telling compiler not to. I haven't seen Zig and I'll check it out. But some of the "fanfare" is necessary to get people involved and things built. Many other langs and projects that are technically worthwhile never get any of…

I don't have a problem with the fanfare, but let's not drink our own kool-aid, yeah?

If there's a new language that wants to try its luck, it still only needs to beat the incumbent, not the rest of the wannabes (one or some of which may well one day be the incumbent, but none are anywhere near that yet).

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