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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)

#141

Post by taeric »

tuatoru wrote: post #137
taeric wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure that I sympathize with your example. Why not a type for even numbers? Odd, prime, not-prime, etc? You really are asking for a type that is "valid data." Commendable, but not a static property of data. As a fun example, what is a valid email address? Once established as valid, how long will it stay that way? If invalid, how long until it can become valid? Do I think better typing can be a boon? Absolut…

> Why not a type for even numbers? Odd, prime, not-prime, etc? Those are not mathematical entities in the same way as are the sets W (whole numbers) or N (natural numbers, indices). It is reasonable to specify your domain closely, otherwise you end up with sqlite. "Why not a type for datetimes or complex numbers?" would be a better question, as those are different kinds of things but not quite so frequently used in p…

This is a bit of a false distinction, to me. Especially as a string, the motivating example for this thread, is also not the same.

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

#143

Post by taeric »

simonh wrote: post #108
taeric wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure that I sympathize with your example. Why not a type for even numbers? Odd, prime, not-prime, etc? You really are asking for a type that is "valid data." Commendable, but not a static property of data. As a fun example, what is a valid email address? Once established as valid, how long will it stay that way? If invalid, how long until it can become valid? Do I think better typing can be a boon? Absolut…

That’s easy, a valid email address is one that is well formed, conforming to the specification for email addresses. I know what you’re trying to get at, but that’s just a category error. It’s a misuse of the term valid in this context. For example my mail archive contains many emails from valid addresses for which there happens to be no currently active mail box end point. They’re still valid data though. The fact th…

Why is that valid? You already introduced a new term for this concept, well formed.

Amusingly, this distinction constantly annoys me with contact managers. I don't want to change my friend's phone number to the new one. I want to mark the old one as no longer active, and add the new one. Similar for deceased family.

Back to the point, you seem to want null punning for the empty string. But you still need to check for validity of the value when it is not empty. What does that really gain you?

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

#145

Post by still_grokking »

Risord wrote: post #136
still_grokking wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be than at least 3/4 of a page long I guess. The fun part is this is not even the full truth. As the list of TLD isn't very static any more it's additionally difficult to determine whether a host name is valid. That is only possible with some dynamic list (or a regex that would grow indefinitely and ever change). The presented solution doesn't even take this into account. The source page I've linked is a qui…

You propably would want to reuse referenced definitions like domain and IP which are not email specific. But yes all of our JS could be much shorter if we used APL but most of us like readability :P I kind of not get why TLD should be validated. Does it matter anymore than if sub domain is not registered of if IP is not reachable. I think valid as potentially deliverable and actually deliverable should be distincted…

The TLD part matters as some part of the email format is defined through the format of a valid host name. "something.com" is a valid host name, but "something.something" isn't currently a valid host name. So an email address "something@something.something" isn't a valid email address (currently).

But at the end of the day this is all moot, imho. The "only" sane test to check the validity of an email address when someone shows you one is whether you can successfully deliver mail there.

Because even an address is formally valid doesn't mean it will get accepted by all systems on it's way. Almost nobody follows the under specified, confusing, and contradictory specs to the letter.

That was my point in the first place: Trying to validate email addresses is a rabbit hole. It's for sure everything, but not "simple", as claimed above.

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

#146

Post by still_grokking »

dd444fgdfg wrote: post #144

I don't think languages will really "progress" much, in the way that art doesn't progress. That's not to say it wont evolve to suite it's environment.

Large parts of computer science are about languages.

There is a lot of progress. (Research needs to be novel usually).

Only that that progress arrives at mainstream usually 20+ years later, in very small batches. So it's not very visible when looking only on the practically relevant things.

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

#148

Post by still_grokking »

mikewarot wrote: post #19

Metamine represents the latest breakthrough in programming, it offers a mix of tradition declarative programming and reactive programming. The "magical equals" for lack of a better term, lets you do "reactive evaluation", the opposite of lazy evaluation. If any of the terms that a term depend on change, the result is updated, and all it's dependencies, etc. You can use the system clock as a term, thus have a chain of…

Dataflow languages are going back to the late 70ies.

Think Excel. ;-)

But I agree it's an under-explored branch of programming.

Event-"handlers" are by the way dataflow based in QML. Dataflow shines in GUIs.

But not only there:

https://enso.org/

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

#149

Post by setpatchaddress »

wmanley wrote: post #128
citrin_ru wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stack Overflow Its blessing and a curse. I think software would be better if coders read mans and other documentation more often (and standards like RFC where it is applicable). > git - Revision control that is low enough overhead that you need to have a reason not to use it. RCS - 1982 CVS - 1990 They are limited compare to git, but they perform the main function - track changes in text files allowing to see previ…

The point was that these were either dismissed or weren't considered by Kay when describing breakthroughs in computer programming. They aren't breakthroughs in computer programming languages, but IMO are breakthroughs in computer programming. > RCS - 1982 CVS - 1990 I don't accept CVS as a breakthrough in the same way as git has been. Back in 2000 - 10 years after CVS - using source control wasn't a given. We had art…

SVN fixed a lot of the issues with CVS, FWIW; setup, maintenance, robustness were much improved. But, yes, git was a major breakthrough. Even if you ignore the advantages of a DVCS and git's raw speed, git provides the ability to branch freely, with reasonable confidence that you can merge without spending days reconstructing your divergent source ("merge hell").

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

#150

Post by ragnese »

taeric wrote: post #67
ragnese wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not so sure that I sympathize with your example. Why not a type for even numbers? Odd, prime, not-prime, etc? You really are asking for a type that is "valid data." Commendable, but not a static property of data. As a fun example, what is a valid email address? Once established as valid, how long will it stay that way? If invalid, how long until it can become valid? Do I think better typing can be a boon? Absolut…

So... why NOT a type for even numbers? Or prime numbers?

I'm not asking for someone to supply these things in the standard library of $FOOLANG. I'm saying that very few languages offer the tools to define such things without it being very cumbersome and often incurring significant runtime overhead.

I know it's possible to do better because I've read up a bit on Ada. I've used Rust and written my own "newtypes" with the Deref "trick". I've toyed with Haskell.

So, yeah, please let me define a "PrimeInt" type!

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