I wish these language websites would put an example of some code right there on the homepage so I can see what the language "feels" like. I finally found some code in the tutorials https://tutorial.ponylang.io/getting-started/hello-world
Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
11–20 of 284 posts
Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
#12I gave it an honest look for 5 minutes and after still only having found a 3-line hello world I gave up (and came here to complain). It's great that you have all that philosophy behind it, all sounded great, but if you don't show me a compelling example in the first minute or two, not even in tutorial, then you'll fail to capture my interest.
Example pony applications: https://github.com/ponylang/ponyc/tree/main/examples Playground: https://playground.ponylang.io/ They're on HP https://www.ponylang.io/ unfortunately the article link points to /discover/
Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
#13Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
#14I wish these language websites would put an example of some code right there on the homepage so I can see what the language "feels" like. I finally found some code in the tutorials https://tutorial.ponylang.io/getting-started/hello-world
Exactly. A "try language" demo should dive right into an editable executor with syntax highlighting and API-docs floating tool tip code completion. Make it as painless and fast to understand as possible.
Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. A "try language" demo should dive right into an editable executor with syntax highlighting and API-docs floating tool tip code completion. Make it as painless and fast to understand as possible.
You mean this executor[0] which is linked right there on the page we are discussing here? [0]: http://playground.ponylang.io/
Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
#16One of the innovative point of Pony is the iso reference. iso reference means that an object graph is accessible from only that iso reference. It avoids sharing mutable data.
Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
#17I wish these language websites would put an example of some code right there on the homepage so I can see what the language "feels" like. I finally found some code in the tutorials https://tutorial.ponylang.io/getting-started/hello-world
I would be torn if I had to write intro documentation like this. On the one hand, people demand code examples, but on the other hand, the majority of people reading code examples will nitpick minor pet peeves in the syntax and completely detract from the actual new ideas and concepts that go way beyond just the syntax.
I found the descriptions of the concepts very enlightening and I honestly think they gave me a better idea of what the language would “feel like” to program in than a code example (or a description of the syntax) would have.
In theory, syntax should be interchangeable. It's conceivable to parse a syntax into an AST and reexpress it in another syntax without changing the AST. In practice, this is not done for many reasons (incl. tooling like diffs) but a big reason is that individual bits and bobs of the syntax are tied to the new concepts in subtle ways. There could absolutely be multiple syntaxes for the same concept, but if the concept is new, even in small and unobvious ways, then no prior existing language’s syntax will map it exactly. For this reason, a code example can't really express the new concept, especially if the syntax is superficially similar to another language that doesn't actually have that concept.
Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
#18I gave it an honest look for 5 minutes and after still only having found a 3-line hello world I gave up (and came here to complain). It's great that you have all that philosophy behind it, all sounded great, but if you don't show me a compelling example in the first minute or two, not even in tutorial, then you'll fail to capture my interest.
Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
#19>This is a type declaration. The keyword actor means we are going to define an actor, which is a bit like a class in Python, Java, C#, C++, etc. Pony has classes too, which we’ll see later. > The difference between an actor and a class is that an actor can have asynchronous methods, called behaviours. We’ll talk more about that later. Who wrote this[1]? The Doctor? [1] https://tutorial.ponylang.io/getting-started/how…
Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
#20I wish these language websites would put an example of some code right there on the homepage so I can see what the language "feels" like. I finally found some code in the tutorials https://tutorial.ponylang.io/getting-started/hello-world
This bit from the About page is notable: "never write a programming language. That’s like rule #1. Everybody will just tell you it isn’t needed and then argue about syntax."