I wonder if the bones of this language came out of the work Microsoft put into Sing# 15 years ago.
The Bosque Programming Language
111–120 of 178 posts
Re: The Bosque Programming Language
#112At 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…
> 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 default any non-trivial type is heap-allocated). These are just ways in which it is worse than Rust as far as performance goes, since "ergonomics"/"productivity" is so subjective.…
Have a look at Nim: https://nim-lang.org/
It's a system language that's focused on readability and performance. It has OOP but isn't focused on it, and has some of the best AST metaprogamming out there built in as a core principle, so it's easy to extend the language. Strong static typing with type inferrence, specific type for garbage collecting (ref type) - everything else is on the stack by default, or you can manually manage memory.
Looks a bit like Python, compiles to C, C++, ObjectC, Javascript and experimentally to LLVM. Good support for Windows, Linux and Mac (and anything you can target a C compiler for). Performance matches equivilent code in C, C++, and Rust. Programs compile to stand alone exes making them easy to distribute. Compilation is very fast.
If I only have one thing to say about it, my personal experience has been that Nim makes programming more fun by being really low friction; it just gets out of your way, yet runs really fast. It's great for scripting out a prototype for something, but because of the high performance that prototype can be expanded into a full product. It also helps that you can write server and client code in the same language too.
Re: The Bosque Programming Language
#113At 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…
> It’s already suspicious by virtue of having a hand-wavy "Int" type (what size/signedness is that?)
That is a common misunderstanding by people who haven’t spent time with high level languages.
In any language more precise numeric types allows for faster arithmetic operations if used appropriately. This is the primary reason Java is still a few times faster than JavaScript when comparing application benchmarks focusing on arithmetic and why those performance differences drop considerably when comparing non-arithmetic operations.
The lower level the language is, closer to the metal, the more important these performance cases matter. This is also acceptable from a design perspective because you need to also be worried about memory management, pointer arithmetic, type conversion, and various other low level concerns anyways.
The whole point of a high level language is to not worry about those things. The compiler/interpreter does that heavy lifting. For example Java and C# are both garbage collected so you, by default, don’t get a say in memory management. If you wanted that control then just use C++.
A major pain point in Java is conversion of numeric types. JavaScript only has one numeric type, that is really shitty in all respects, and writing numeric operations in JavaScript is so much cleaner and more fluid in the code.
Re: The Bosque Programming Language
#114I stopped reading at "from Microsoft Research."...
Re: The Bosque Programming Language
#115> is a breakthrough research project [citation needed] In all seriousness, each time when I see a project self-describing itself as a breakthrough, it is a red flag. No matter if it is programming, mathematics, arts, or anything. (Of course, unless used ironically.) Either, it is a huge ego and a total lack of self-skepticism (vide Stephen Wolfram's recent Theory of Everything) or fiddling of the marketing department…
"Bosque simultaneously supports a high productivity development experience [...] with a performance profile similar to a native C++ application.[...] Bosque also brings an unprecedented tooling ecosystem including zero-effort verification, symbolic testing, dependency management validation, time-travel debugging, and more."
If this is not breakthrough, what is?
Re: The Bosque Programming Language
#116The snark and meanness in this HN thread is totally uncalled for and why people don't publish code. I can't believe this thread is on the front page together with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23157783 . Go read that, especially the ending comments on open source. > I made this thing that I thought was cool and I gave it away, and what I got back were occasionally friendly people who nicely requested things fr…
The issue here is the link; it doesn't do a great job of explaining _why_ Bosque is breakthrough. A bold claim like that needs evidence. What's special here? From glancing at the code snippets--which is really all we have in the way of evidence on that page--I see an interesting language concept, but it's not entirely here how that relates to the initial claim. There are definitely some interesting elements, though.…
This is a much better link. Bold vague buzzwords on the GitHub page ("a breakthrough research project", "a high productivity development experience", "an unprecedented tooling ecosystem") inflict antagonistic mood towards the whole project.
Re: The Bosque Programming Language
#117This is another PL I won't try (not that the authors should care). I'm still waiting for a good "system programming language" that - has compile time execution that can call a compiler API to allow compile time code generation - full compile time reflection, optional runtime reflection - doesn't have any kind shape or form of automatic memory management - has decent discriminated unions - is not much more opinionated…
Take a look at Jai. It's not released yet and doesn't cover all your bullet points but it promises speed and getting out of your way, especially if you are a game programmer who loves build pipelines and data oriented design.
Re: The Bosque Programming Language
#118This is pretty cool. This project has a long way to go before it's mature, but as someone who uses Typescript every day professionally, the promise of the ease and safety of Typescript coupled with the speed of C++ is really compelling.
You can already play with something like that, Static TypeScript, used on MakeCode for targeting embedded devices. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/static-... Microsoft MakeCode: from C++ to TypeScript and Blockly (and Back) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGhhV2kfJ-w https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/makecode
This is cool, thanks for sharing. I'm rather in the same boat as OP.
Re: The Bosque Programming Language
#119At 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…
> It’s already suspicious by virtue of having a hand-wavy "Int" type (what size/signedness is that?) That is a common misunderstanding by people who haven’t spent time with high level languages. In any language more precise numeric types allows for faster arithmetic operations if used appropriately. This is the primary reason Java is still a few times faster than JavaScript when comparing application benchmarks focus…
This is correct, and applies (and is helpful) to many cases.
But the moment you need to shift an "Int", or do bitwise operations or transmit it in a network packet (think about endianness, etc.), is the moment you may regret that the compiler is doing too much heavy-lifting for you.
Re: The Bosque Programming Language
#120The snark and meanness in this HN thread is totally uncalled for and why people don't publish code. I can't believe this thread is on the front page together with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23157783 . Go read that, especially the ending comments on open source. > I made this thing that I thought was cool and I gave it away, and what I got back were occasionally friendly people who nicely requested things fr…
This isn't just some person's hobby project; this is from Microsoft Research. It's a slightly different standard.