Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures • Hacker News Board

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#121

Post by JonChesterfield » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:30 PM UTC

thecompilr wrote: post #109

turminal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much time did you waste?

I don't recall exactly, but at least a day each I would say? They were all performance critical, so had to put some effort. Two of them were for internal nginx patches, but were storing data a bit differently so code couldn't be quite reused. In languages with generics hashmaps are trivial to reuse with zero performance cost.

Is there one with enough parameterisation to choose between different hash collision / resizing / data layout choices? Or one where the various tree/trie/vector alternatives can be swapped in? Seems possible to write such, but std::unordered_map doesn't have it. Maybe rust?

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#122

Post by capableweb » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:30 PM UTC

jolux wrote: post #117

amelius wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean. Rust has no functional programming either ...

Functional programming patterns are very common in Rust code. It doesn’t have automatic currying or higher-kinded types but it has generic associated types, anonymous functions, closures, and a rich set of collections with functional processing methods in the standard library.

A lot of the standard library and an extensive part of the community ecosystem lives and breathes mutation at both the edges and in the internals, something people normally would avoid when trying to stick with functional programming. Sure, some mutation is always needed, but Rust wouldn't be the first language I'd pick if I want to focus on functional programming for sure.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#123

Post by turminal » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

jolux wrote: post #106

socialdemocrat wrote: post #100

Why do people spend so much energy shooting down a language nobody uses? If you don’t like it you don’t have to use it. I would hate to be the creator of Hare and get so much crap for simply daring to exist. He is making a language he likes and wants to use. There are probably some people who like it and find it useful. Good for them! A lot of us have dreams of building our own language. He is following his passions…

We don’t need more memory-unsafe languages with no generics and no functional programming. We just don’t. If it were a toy project for learning and pedagogical purposes that’s one thing but for code that’s supposed to be used in production it’s useless.

What, in your opinion, does functional programming bring to the table for writing things Hare is designed for?

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#124

Post by capableweb » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

jolux wrote: post #106

socialdemocrat wrote: post #100

Why do people spend so much energy shooting down a language nobody uses? If you don’t like it you don’t have to use it. I would hate to be the creator of Hare and get so much crap for simply daring to exist. He is making a language he likes and wants to use. There are probably some people who like it and find it useful. Good for them! A lot of us have dreams of building our own language. He is following his passions…

We don’t need more memory-unsafe languages with no generics and no functional programming. We just don’t. If it were a toy project for learning and pedagogical purposes that’s one thing but for code that’s supposed to be used in production it’s useless.

You sure speak surely about "us" like there is just one group of programmers out there. Some people love JavaScript, some people love C. Some people only use programming languages, some create new ones.

Live and let live, don't tell others what they need.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#125

Post by zozbot234 » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #108

jolux wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t need more memory-unsafe languages with no generics and no functional programming. We just don’t. If it were a toy project for learning and pedagogical purposes that’s one thing but for code that’s supposed to be used in production it’s useless.

Not sure what you mean. Rust has no functional programming either ...

Rust is a functional programming language, that's exactly what's implemented in the basic borrow checking rules. Interior mutability is added to that featureset, so as to support procedural programming with shared mutable state.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#126

Post by rowanG077 » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #124

jolux wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t need more memory-unsafe languages with no generics and no functional programming. We just don’t. If it were a toy project for learning and pedagogical purposes that’s one thing but for code that’s supposed to be used in production it’s useless.

You sure speak surely about "us" like there is just one group of programmers out there. Some people love JavaScript, some people love C. Some people only use programming languages, some create new ones. Live and let live, don't tell others what they need.

Honestly memory unsafe languages shouldn't be used with exception of very few corner cases. It's the same reason why we no longer allow cars without seatbelts. You don't go around saying that seatbelts shouldn't be mandatory because you don't need them.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#127

Post by zozbot234 » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #122

jolux wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Functional programming patterns are very common in Rust code. It doesn’t have automatic currying or higher-kinded types but it has generic associated types, anonymous functions, closures, and a rich set of collections with functional processing methods in the standard library.

A lot of the standard library and an extensive part of the community ecosystem lives and breathes mutation at both the edges and in the internals, something people normally would avoid when trying to stick with functional programming. Sure, some mutation is always needed, but Rust wouldn't be the first language I'd pick if I want to focus on functional programming for sure.

Mutation within a single program flow is a well-known functional programming pattern, e.g. as supported by the ST feature in Haskell. Shared mutability is much harder to reason about, so is generally excluded and Rust implements it separately.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#128

Post by jmmv » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

socialdemocrat wrote: post #100

Why do people spend so much energy shooting down a language nobody uses? If you don’t like it you don’t have to use it. I would hate to be the creator of Hare and get so much crap for simply daring to exist. He is making a language he likes and wants to use. There are probably some people who like it and find it useful. Good for them! A lot of us have dreams of building our own language. He is following his passions…

> Why do people spend so much energy shooting down a language nobody uses? If you don’t like it you don’t have to use it.

Because this language isn't made by a nobody. It's made by a popular person with a following, so the language _will_ get used by a non-insignificant number of people. And those people _will_ (re)implement all the things that you want a language to have (database connections, networking libraries, (de)serialization libraries, etc.). And these things, which can be performance/security-critical, will be impacted by the issues people are pointing out.

Once we reach this plausible scenario, it's likely that some software that you want to use on, say, your server, will depend on those libraries. And _then_, like it or not, _you_ will be impacted by the choices of the language and be subject to whichever bugs all those people made when reimplementing (in this case) hash tables.

We could assume that everyone writing libraries in this language will be an expert and not make mistakes, but that is just a non-starter. In a sufficiently-large ecosystem, the people writing code will come from all sorts of backgrounds and have all levels of expertise, so you _will_ get buggy code in important libraries, and those bugs are the stuff most CVEs are made of nowadays.

I get with what you are saying that people are free to develop a language as they choose, and I agree with you there---I'm building my own and it's _not_ a modern language---but there can be consequences in the larger industry, and that's the "scary" part.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#129

Post by mplanchard » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

0des wrote: post #69

capableweb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no fists in this fight, but wanted some clarification. Are you saying the reason Rust is now being integrated into the Kernel instead of Golang is because of the success of evangelists, not because of the merit of the language itself? I'm not involved in Kernel development myself, but if I was, I'd see your statement as a big hit in the face that we don't know what we're doing, if they (Kernel developers) are…

Its not existing kernel devs that suddenly switched to rust. It is the incoming cohort.

The main push for and patches to include rust in linux have come from an established and longtime kernel contributor. What you’re saying is categorically false.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#130

Post by tialaramex » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

ben-schaaf wrote: post #82

ddevault wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not atrocious unless you need the performance. A linked list with a hundred items which is scanned every 90 seconds or something does not really demand attention for optimization, but it will be simpler, easier to write, easier to understand, and easier to debug, and those are wins are not to be sniffed at. And for the record, Hare does have built-in growable slices, so linked lists are pretty rare in Hare. They…

For sure there's plenty of circumstances where you don't need more performance, but you can't seriously argue re-implementing another linked list is simpler, easier to write, easier to understand or easier to debug than `std::vector`/`Vec`. Multiple allocations and setting up pointers is certainly more complex than allocation/copy. It's most definitely easier to write because you're not writing it, someone else alrea…

My impression, although it was difficult to be sure, is that Hare's "slices" (or maybe arrays?) are actually vectors, in at least some cases.

It seems you can grow them by appending, so they aren't like Rust's slice which is non-owning or a typical array which can't grow.

I suspect a Linked List is actually almost never the right shape for a data structure in Hare, because you should just use these vectors to do that.

The two actual rationales for Linked List in the 21st century (other than "I was writing C and I don't know what I'm doing") are: 1. Concurrency, Lock Free and sometimes even Wait Free algorithms are practical for Linked List and the other costs pale into comparison on highly contended data structures and 2. I'm doing some serious acrobatics with huge lists, I constantly perform split/ merge operations and so those being cheap is crucial. Hare doesn't have concurrency, and nobody should attempt such acrobatics in a language this dangerous.