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What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

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Re: What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

#21

Post by scythe »

karmakaze wrote: post #15

There isn't so much in languages features themselves, but in their implementations. GC can be largely pauseless for many practical purposes and a GC language can be within 2x-3x the performance of C-like languages. Also the amount/cost of memory has improved so that we can use immutable datastructures and functional style in many contexts, which definitely feels like a 'level-up'. Concurrency has been getting easier…

>GC can be largely pauseless for many practical purposes and a GC language can be within 2x-3x the performance of C-like languages.

To that end, it seems like only recently we've seen automatic reference counting [Obj-C, Rust, Swift] and/or compile-time garbage collection [Mercury] in a non-toy implementation. "Breakthrough" is a difficult word because it refers to discovery and impact, with the latter coming long after the former, and it's not clear if ARC is really a game-changer for any serious applications, but it seems interesting at least.

Re: What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

#22

Post by steveklabnik »

scythe wrote: post #21
karmakaze wrote: post #15

There isn't so much in languages features themselves, but in their implementations. GC can be largely pauseless for many practical purposes and a GC language can be within 2x-3x the performance of C-like languages. Also the amount/cost of memory has improved so that we can use immutable datastructures and functional style in many contexts, which definitely feels like a 'level-up'. Concurrency has been getting easier…

>GC can be largely pauseless for many practical purposes and a GC language can be within 2x-3x the performance of C-like languages. To that end, it seems like only recently we've seen automatic reference counting [Obj-C, Rust, Swift] and/or compile-time garbage collection [Mercury] in a non-toy implementation. "Breakthrough" is a difficult word because it refers to discovery and impact, with the latter coming long af…

(Rust does not do automatic reference counting)

Re: What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

#23

Post by goatlover »

blacktriangle wrote: post #16
karmakaze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that you have to think in a different style so would classify as a different paradigm and not just syntax.

Going back to the original comment, the statement was that any experienced engineer could learn a language in a day. At risk of gatekeeping, I'd argue that by definition any experienced engineer would have some experience with an array based language like APL or MATLAB so that no, J does not qualify as a different paradigm.

I guess it depends on how much past experience they had with an array-based, stack-based, logic-based, pure functional or lisp family language, and how long ago that was. I can believe an experienced engineer can learn the basics of any language in a day. But being proficient and idiomatic is another matter.

Re: What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

#24

Post by Joker_vD »

gcanyon wrote: post #7

I think Kay's complaint about engineering rigor ignores the explosive growth of programming. Sure, bridge-builders have rigor; there's also probably about the same number of them today as there were 50 years ago. The number of programmers has grown by at least two, maybe three orders of magnitude over the last half century. And more importantly, almost anyone can do it. A kid whose closest approach to structural engi…

Well, rigor and quality in building industry are location dependent. I've read a blog of a builder who describes how architects regularly produce dangerous (too thin or just simply missing load-bearing beams) or straight up impossible (gable of negative size, yep) designs. The solution is that the builders just build whatever makes sense and sometimes the contractors simply don't notice.

Re: What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

#25

Post by ragnese »

karmakaze wrote: post #15

There isn't so much in languages features themselves, but in their implementations. GC can be largely pauseless for many practical purposes and a GC language can be within 2x-3x the performance of C-like languages. Also the amount/cost of memory has improved so that we can use immutable datastructures and functional style in many contexts, which definitely feels like a 'level-up'. Concurrency has been getting easier…

It's nice to read a positive comment like yours occasionally, because the vast majority of the time, I'm just disappointed in how bad our programming tools (including languages) are.

It's become a meme in my office that I'm the guy constantly bitching about how stupid our languages are. This week I was back on my soap box about the fact that almost zero mainstream (statically typed) programming languages can even let you write down that you want a non-empty string. In some languages you can implement your own class/type that wraps around the built-in string type, but most of the time you are now introducing memory and CPU overhead, can't use your type with other APIs that expect strings, etc. So nobody does that. But ask yourself this: how often have you ever written a function that requested a string as input and actually wanted an empty string? How many times did you not even think about what would happen if someone DID pass an empty string?

Same goes for positive and non-negative numbers. How many times did you write "int" when you actually only wanted a positive number? If I have to type "if x People make all kinds of Stockholm Syndrome-y excuses for it ("validate inputs at the edges is all you need"), but the truth is that (most of) our languages are so deficient for expressing really basic ideas.

Thank goodness there are some languages that do try to make it possible to write "newtypes" and try to make concurrency safer. Now if we could just get everyone to adopt those in less than a decade, maybe we'd be able to get to the next generation after that, and then maybe we'll have good programming languages before I die.

Sorry that turned into a rant... :/

Re: What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

#26

Post by gcanyon »

dahfizz wrote: post #8
gcanyon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try learning J in a day. It...won't go well -- but in a good way. :-) As you say, for many languages the paradigm is some variation of C, and the concepts are largely interchangeable. Then you approach something like J, where (trivial example) +/%# returns the average of a list by composing three functions: + sums; % divides; # counts; with a modifier / that distributes + throughout the list; and you begin to realize…

That's just a syntax over map() and reduce(). There are no new / different primitives in J, just a new syntax that emphasizes the use of arrays.

It's a bit ironic that we're essentially having a blub language debate on ycombinator's web site. I'll defer to Paul Graham's response: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

Re: What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

#27

Post by api »

I wouldn't call it a breakthrough as the ideas are not new, but I consider Rust to be a major practical advancement that brings ideas into the mainstream that were formerly just for "academic" languages.

It's the first IMO viable alternative to C and C++ for systems programming ever, and its safety features represent a successful transfer of provable-safety ideas of academia into a practical language that people actually want to use for real stuff.

As for true breakthroughs I'd say the last big one was modern deep learning.

Re: What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

#29

Post by gcanyon »

IncRnd wrote: post #9
gcanyon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try learning J in a day. It...won't go well -- but in a good way. :-) As you say, for many languages the paradigm is some variation of C, and the concepts are largely interchangeable. Then you approach something like J, where (trivial example) +/%# returns the average of a list by composing three functions: + sums; % divides; # counts; with a modifier / that distributes + throughout the list; and you begin to realize…

J is essentially APL. I think the point is that J is functionally equivalent with many other languages, only differing in syntax but not in paradigm.

J is functionally equivalent with APL, and a few other related languages like K. In the end you can call anything "syntax," but I'd invite you to give it a try. If C is British English and Python is online-English, then J is Russian, or maybe even Mandarin.

Re: What was the last breakthrough in computer programming? (2019)

#30

Post by raspasov »

ragnese wrote: post #25
karmakaze wrote: post #15

There isn't so much in languages features themselves, but in their implementations. GC can be largely pauseless for many practical purposes and a GC language can be within 2x-3x the performance of C-like languages. Also the amount/cost of memory has improved so that we can use immutable datastructures and functional style in many contexts, which definitely feels like a 'level-up'. Concurrency has been getting easier…

It's nice to read a positive comment like yours occasionally, because the vast majority of the time, I'm just disappointed in how bad our programming tools (including languages) are. It's become a meme in my office that I'm the guy constantly bitching about how stupid our languages are. This week I was back on my soap box about the fact that almost zero mainstream (statically typed) programming languages can even let…

Checkout Clojure spec for a very expressive way of defining data requirements. It allows you to use arbitrary functions to describe data requirements. That way you are not limited by static, compile-time only descriptions of data flowing through your program.
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