51–60 of 102 posts
Now I really need to get serious about starting a project in D so I can learn it properly...
Walter here! AMA!
Hi Walter. I was curious about your opinions on some of the mathey functional languages out there, like Haskell or OCaml or F# or even something more elaborate like Idris or Agda. Do you feel like they should have a place in industry, or just high-level self-indulgence?
I attempted to write some code in OCaml, but failed miserably. My (short) programs would fail with incomprehensible (to me) error messages. Trying different syntaxes just produced other messages. Other than the OCaml book, which I had, I couldn't find any helpful information online. I gave up on OCaml. OCaml may actually be a great language if it had a better compiler and far better documentation.
I know nothing about F#, Idris or Agda.
Great interview! I've always thought it was really neat that Walter posts here semi-frequently, and it's really fascinating to get even more of a peek into the mind of such a creative individual. Now I really need to get serious about starting a project in D so I can learn it properly...
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That pretty much sums up American vs. British comedy (televisual anyway) for me. US: 'momentarily interesting' (resp. funny at the time) - series of one-liners and the like; UK: character development, hard to explain why it's funny, might take 'getting into'. Green Wing for example - I thought it was absolutely absurd when I first saw it, and it is. But for some reason I went back to it (or was made to) and stuck wit…
I think it's less that the US doesn't have those, it's just that they have both types, and they also mix them. Seinfeld wouldn't have been half as good as it was without you knowing the character and how they would react to specific situations. I think part of what you're identifying about first episodes is maybe a difference in style between the US and UK. A lot of UK comedy definitely seems like the characters are…
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> The macros inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the author winds up inventing his own undocumented mess of a language, unusable for anyone else. This is not limited to macros, but any abstraction. Let's step back and rewrite the quote: > The abstractions inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the author winds up inventing his own undocumented mess of a language, unusable fo…
So I'm not a fan of metaprogramming or heavy abuse of tricks for convenience either, and I do get and agree with your point! But for some anecdotal nuance concerning the React example: > Take React for example. It's an abstraction, arguably a new "language", and requires ample documentation and usability concessions to be palatable. You could accomplish this with macros as well. I feel like the standard before React…
Doing things this way shows you that the tooling doesn’t have to be complicated. I assume that there are very good reasons why the tooling is complicated—stuff like code splitting, modular CSS, etc. If you’re writing pure JS React and putting the CSS elsewhere, you can squeak by with fairly simple tools.
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Thanks for your thoughts. I'm not sure about lessons forgotten, but there are definitely lessons never learned. One is the use of macros in programming languages. Macros are one of those great ideas that seem almost miraculous. They provide immense power to the programmer. Unfortunately, the dahk side of macros inevitably consumes the user. The macros inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the aut…
> The macros inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the author winds up inventing his own undocumented mess of a language, unusable for anyone else. This is not limited to macros, but any abstraction. Let's step back and rewrite the quote: > The abstractions inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the author winds up inventing his own undocumented mess of a language, unusable fo…
Disagree here. Unix process, file access api's, programming languages are all abstractions that make life easier.
Walter here! AMA!
I remember how all the mailing list waited for 1.0 finally after 0.99 and… oooow… “announcing DMD 0.100” :)
I was 17 at my first job ever, it was in gamedev, and I promised everyone that D would be the next thing after that clunky C++ in two (maybe three) years. That’s how we should make games \m/
Sadly, it didn’t come to that extent (marketing?). But I am glad to visit dlang.org from time to time and see it evolve, and Walter Bright still rocks, 20 years after.
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Hello Walter! I'm interested in programming languages and the design of compilers. I'm relatively novice to programming, but languages have long captured my imagination. Three questions for you: Do you have a blog where I can read about your compiler escapades? have you any advice for the aspiring novice? which is your favorite language, and why?
Advice for the novice. Hmm. Best advice I can give is ignore your critics and everyone who tells you it can't be done, you're not good enough, you'll inevitably fail. Market research has always led me astray. Making things that simply please myself have been far, far more successful. Which is my favorite language? D, of course! As for why, it's the language I always wanted to program in, though I didn't realize it an…
I loved the podcast you did with Alexandrescu on GoingNative! The two of you said that you want D to have a million users; how does user accumulation work in programming languages? Intuitively, I'd expect linear growth until some critical point, and exponential thereafter. Do you agree? if so, what do you think that critical mass might be?
Also, on that same podcast, the host evaluated that D is ready for the million users you're shooting for. Do you have any plans to open a software shop or a consultancy to bring D into the industry? I've seen certain other language organizations, like the Haxe folks, do similar.
With regards to D-Lang: why do you ask that contributors assign copyright to you for improvements made to dmd? Is that just so you control the code-base?
Finally, I'd love to see a section of low-hanging fruit for novice contributors to work on. Whatever incentive it's worth: I will personally commit to fulfilling at least one item of any such list, if and when it should ever be published.
I'll be following D-Lang much more closely, I'm very excited to see how it evolves!
Walter here! AMA!