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Dada, an experimental new programming language

dada-lang.org

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Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#151

Post by sanderjd »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #125
sanderjd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ocaml, yes, but not haskell. It does include these things the parent wants, but similar to how Rust ends up being quite "captured" by its memory semantics and the mechanics necessary to make them work, haskell is "captured" by laziness and purity and the mechanics necessary to make those work. Also, syntax does actually matter, because it's the first thing people see, and many people are immediately turned off by unf…

I learned SML/NJ and OCaml a bit over 20 years ago and liked them, but when I tried my hand at Haskell my eyes glossed over. I get its power. But I do not like its syntax, it's hard to read. And yes, the obsession with purity.

Exactly right. I quite like haskell in theory, but in practice I quite dislike both reading and writing it.

But I like ocaml both in theory and practice (also in part due to having my eyes opened to SML about 20 years ago).

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#152

Post by iainmerrick »

sanderjd wrote: post #110
actionfromafar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are going that far, I suggest hopping off just one station earlier at Crystal-lang.

Yep, I think Crystal is the thing that is making a real go at essentially this suggestion. And I think it's a great language and hope it will grow.

Do you know how Crystal compares with Haxe? That's another one that might fit the requirements nicely.

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#154

Post by talkingtab »

My opinionated opinion: programming languages have three goals. 1) Be safe, don't make mistakes 2) Be expressive: The Sapir Whorf hypothesis 3) Be easy to use.

JavaScript (new) is +++2, and ++3 (to me). Java is +++1 & --2, -3.

Personally I like OO ("has a") but think Class-ification,("is a") is a big mistake. Take a truck and a car. Start replacing the pieces of the car with pieces from the truck. When is a car not a car? Arbitrary. When does the car have a tail gate, a flat bed?

That is not a joke. Classes and Types are a way to think (Sapir Whorf) that makes you do strange things.

The interesting thing about Dada is the "borrow", "share" etc and seems very good. But then instead of wrapping it in a class can't we just use an Object?

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#155

Post by seanc »

couchand wrote: post #143
jacobr1 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related notion is that you need strong, well-thought out, and when the system is changing, regularly refactored abstractions. You might not need a DSL but your class/type/trait designs needs to be sane, your API needs to be solid, etc ... DDD principles are key here.

Yes, eat your vegetables! A question of philosophy: If you have all that, don't you already have a DSL, using a deep embedding in the host language?

I certainly think so. Or at least I find it very helpful to think about interface design that way. It's DLS's all the way down.

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#156

Post by pmontra »

yamrzou wrote: post #6

Their Hello, Dada! example: print("...").await I'm coming from Python, and I can't help but ask: If my goal as a programmer is to simply print to the console, why should I care about the await? This already starts with a non zero complexity and some cognitive load, like the `public static void main` from Java.

I'm coming from several languages (C, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python) and I strongly dislike the async/await thing.

At least let people change the default. For example

  await {
    // all the code here
    // runs synchronously 
    async {
      // except this part where
      // async methods will return early
      print("but not me!").await()
    }
  }
However the remark I make to people advocating for static typed Ruby holds for this language too: there are already languages like that (in this case await by default,) we can use them and let Dada do its own thing.

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#157

Post by alphazard »

sorenjan wrote: post #138

Changing a quote to change "his" to "theirs" seem like a very Rust community thing to do. > Updated to use modern pronouns. https://dada-lang.org/docs/about/

I also noticed this, along with the warnings that Dada doesn't really exist yet (which is fine, thanks for the heads up).

I predict this project will have its priorities backwards. There's a group of people who want to govern a programming language project, and inject their ideology into that structure, and maybe there's another group of avid language designers in there too. I think there are more of the first.

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#160

Post by javier_cardona »

sorenjan wrote: post #138

Changing a quote to change "his" to "theirs" seem like a very Rust community thing to do. > Updated to use modern pronouns. https://dada-lang.org/docs/about/

Just for context, the quoted manifesto was originally written in French (https://monoskop.org/images/3/3b/Dada_3_Dec_1918.pdf). In that version, that particular sentence is gender neutral: "tout le monde fait son art a sa façon".

I would say that that their updated quote is a more accurate translation of the original than the English translation they initially used.

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