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Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

ponylang.io

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Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

#161

Post by whytevuhuni »

archerx wrote: post #105
swiftcoder wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a world where there are many languages that do the same thing it really boils down to using the one with the syntax that you like the most Wat? If all languages were just syntax re-skinning, we really wouldn't need more than one compiler backend... Generally the semantic differences are much more important. Rust isn't interesting for its syntax, it's interesting for its ownership rules and borrow checker. Erlang…

You say that but I will never use Rust because of it's awful syntax, I'll stick with C/C++ and be happy and not miss out on anything. I don't know much about erlang so I have no comments on it.

> I will never use Rust because of it's awful syntax, I'll stick with C/C++

Oh, that's very interesting. Rust tried to match C++'s syntax as much as possible.

Which parts do you find awful? Lifetimes and trait bounds?

Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

#162

Post by pphysch »

dismalaf wrote: post #156
pseudocomposer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If “reference capabilities” are the important thing about Pony, they should have a max 100-200 LoC example on the front page that uses them. As far as I can tell reading here, “reference capabilities” don’t do anything that properly-used C semaphores haven’t done for near half a century. Or that their abstraction of that isn’t nicer to use than, say, Elixir’s, or better than Rust’s borrow checker for managing mutabil…

A high performance Actor-based language is fairly unique. Pony is also very fast for a garbage collected language. Also the syntax is great, probably my favourite language ever syntactically. Dunno why there's a pointless argument about it in these comments... The reference capabilities are fairly novel as well. Apart from the lack of tooling, writing in Pony is great.

If the syntax is great (I agree it doesn't seem bad at first glance) then the website attempting to sell the language should quickly demonstrate that syntax and capabilities. This is what the argument was about. "Can we see the syntax without clicking a dozen links?" "No, the syntax is not important."

Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

#163

Post by sitkack »

voidUpdate wrote: post #3

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

It is funny you say this, because nearly every posting of the Pony language includes this comment. And it is always apologized as you need to go to https://tutorial.ponylang.io/ which still doesn't have source on it.

https://github.com/KittyMac/PonyCAT/blob/master/pony-cheat-s...

The project looks hostile to any sort of adoption.

Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

#164

Post by GrinningFool »

pdimitar wrote: post #113
Tainnor wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people visiting such websites are programmers who are more often than not busy as all hell. Apparently not too busy to visit HN and post shallow dismissals. I agree with GP. Not everything is for everyone and expecting every project to cater to your very specific needs is rather entitled. If you're not interested, feel free to move on - I do that all the time for most of the content on here.

> Apparently not too busy to visit HN and post shallow dismissals. Indeed, as you have just excellently demonstrated. I did not dismiss anything, I generalized, which I believe we're all aware is never accurate. Thought that much was obvious and did not warrant a response like yours. > If you're not interested, feel free to move on Exactly what I did, and then I and a few others explained why. No idea why that was me…

Could be they meant the "shitty behaviour" was the complaining, not the moving on.

Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

#165

Post by pdimitar »

GrinningFool wrote: post #164
pdimitar wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently not too busy to visit HN and post shallow dismissals. Indeed, as you have just excellently demonstrated. I did not dismiss anything, I generalized, which I believe we're all aware is never accurate. Thought that much was obvious and did not warrant a response like yours. > If you're not interested, feel free to move on Exactly what I did, and then I and a few others explained why. No idea why that was me…

Could be they meant the "shitty behaviour" was the complaining, not the moving on.

Could be true actually, thanks for the perspective. Though I still would not describe it as complaining, it's more like "Have you thought about that group of potential users?".

Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

#166

Post by Tainnor »

GrinningFool wrote: post #164
pdimitar wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently not too busy to visit HN and post shallow dismissals. Indeed, as you have just excellently demonstrated. I did not dismiss anything, I generalized, which I believe we're all aware is never accurate. Thought that much was obvious and did not warrant a response like yours. > If you're not interested, feel free to move on Exactly what I did, and then I and a few others explained why. No idea why that was me…

Could be they meant the "shitty behaviour" was the complaining, not the moving on.

I'm not necessarily a fan of the original wording "shitty behaviour", but I do find it disappointing that half of the comment section is people complaining about the lack of code examples. It's just not very interesting feedback and makes the discussion worse.

Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

#167

Post by maleldil »

whalesalad wrote: post #134
nallerooth wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Nim has a good homepage, with some bullet points explaining what the language is all about coupled with several code examples. I'm not saying Nim is better, but I visited the page the other day and thought it was neat. https://nim-lang.org/

Nim feels like the perfect language to me. Keep meaning to give it a shot for something.

The way it handles imports is weird. Default to importing everything from the module without qualification? I know you can choose to qualify everything, but that seems to go against the language's conventions.

Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

#168

Post by Twirrim »

jibal wrote: post #87
poulpy123 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the syntax is not important, that would mean coding in whitespace or malboge would be as easy as coding in python

[flagged]

You're talking from a position I don't think many would agree with, at all, and I think the responses you're getting are reflecting that.

Syntax is probably one of the single most important things in any language. It matters for writing, but especially for reading.

Bad syntax leads to all kinds of implementation mistakes. It comes with footguns primed ready to go off, probably at the worst possible time. Bad syntax can also make it hard to re-read code and understand what it's doing (especially if the language leans heavily on "magic"), leading to difficulties when troubleshooting, or difficulties when extending existing code.

The more developers you have involved in any project, the more important good syntax becomes, because you all have to be able to read and understand each other's code, and know precisely what is happening. A lot of the bugs that end up in production tend to stem from some disconnect in understanding of the interactions between sections of code.

Re: Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language

#170

Post by Tainnor »

Twirrim wrote: post #168
jibal wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're talking from a position I don't think many would agree with, at all, and I think the responses you're getting are reflecting that. Syntax is probably one of the single most important things in any language. It matters for writing, but especially for reading. Bad syntax leads to all kinds of implementation mistakes. It comes with footguns primed ready to go off, probably at the worst possible time. Bad syntax c…

> Syntax is probably one of the single most important things in any language. It matters for writing, but especially for reading.

That appears to be your position (and maybe even that of a majority of developers), but it apparently isn't the position of the Pony developers. If you have a language in which you can mathematically reason about code (which Pony claims very prominently), then surface concerns such as syntax seem to matter less.

It's a different design goal and it feels like many people in the comments here don't appreciate that.

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