Beads: Computer language and toolchain • Hacker News Board

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#171

Post by brundolf » Fri, May 28, 2021, 1:59 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #168

brundolf wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MobX does this for JS, in a more generalized way that can be paired with any DOM-update strategy (or other arbitrary side-effects)

"Reactivity" is a common paradigm in the javascript world. There are many libraries to essentially do this or variations on this theme.

There are two key elements in this case:

1) Changes are triggered through regular mutation, not special API calls

2) Reactive dependencies are automatically determined

The combination of these two traits is somewhat unique, and is offered by MobX and (apparently) Beads.

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#172

Post by bawolff » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

magicmouse wrote: post #159

bawolff wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> declarative languages have almost no bugs" Is this even a declaritave language? Doesn't look like it to me at a glance.

The layout system is declarative (with escape hatch to looping and conditionals), and so is the finite state machine syntax DSL inside, and the regular expression syntax (a novel reformulation). But the nicest feature, invisible in the syntax because it is a property of the runtime under the hood, is that when you change your mutable state, any layout that used those variables is automatically scheduled for refresh.…

I don't think having an embedded DSL for defining layouts makes it a declaritive language. By that definition, almost every language is declarative as its a somewhat common way to define layouts (certainly not universal, but common enough that i suspect every language has at least one library that supports it).

If the main facilities for writing logic in the language are procedural, than i'd call that a procedural language.

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#173

Post by bawolff » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #142

throwaway894345 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> declarative languages have almost no bugs That one piqued my attention. It's one thing to say "fewer bugs" and quite another to say "almost none". Rust is a declarative language with one of the more rigorous static analysis checkers (for pedants: among mainstream languages) and I still write buggy code.

In what way is Rust declarative? When I think of a declarative language, I think of Prolog or SQL. Rust to me would seem to be explicitly imperative.

Point still stands. I've made plenty of bugs writing both sql and prolog (although i've only written a small amount of prolog)

Certain classes might be more or less likely, but no paradigm is magic and stops all bugs.

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#174

Post by bawolff » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

kreetx wrote: post #147

Does anyone know other "full-stack web" language attempts?

Javascript (netscape used to sell it as a server side language in the 90's, and more recently there is node.js).

But really with web assembly, anything you want.

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#175

Post by bawolff » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:22 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #148

Is the manual a PDF file? No HTML pages? That was getting already old in the 90s. No Linux version. Maybe is it a language only for GUI apps?

I feel like this is an unfair criticism. We all have pdf readers.

Lack of linux support is only a worthy criticism because appearently portability is a primary design goal and this is going to "replace" linux, but in general that's criticizing the tress for lack of seeing the forest.

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#176

Post by bawolff » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:37 AM UTC

This seems like a mildly interesting project targeting visual displays type niche (is it something similar to the processing language? E.g. a language for making visualizations of data?)

Afaict its features are:

* a string matching DSL that the author thinks is more readable than regex (but what isn't more readable?)

* a very basic graph db

* a syntax that's more Algol like than c (matter of personal taste i guess)

*a declarative layout engine with strong reactivity support

*combining both the server and client side in one lang.

* support for a time travelling debugger

But its totally overshadowed by the utterly bizarre or dare I say "batshit", marketing material.

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#177

Post by knolax » Fri, May 28, 2021, 3:50 AM UTC

Not really a technical comment but this is the first time I've seen language syntax written down with graphs in documentation. I honestly would've preferred text but it is interesting. What tool did you generate them with?

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#178

Post by magicmouse » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:16 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #176

This seems like a mildly interesting project targeting visual displays type niche (is it something similar to the processing language? E.g. a language for making visualizations of data?) Afaict its features are: * a string matching DSL that the author thinks is more readable than regex (but what isn't more readable?) * a very basic graph db * a syntax that's more Algol like than c (matter of personal taste i guess) *…

Beads follows the State-Action-Model pattern (SAM, see sam.js.org) very closely.

Beads is targeting web apps, mobile and desktop graphical applications.

You didn't mention time travel debugging, even on software running on remote customer machines. That's a neat idea.

I would describe the syntax as a mixture of Python and Modula2, which both contributed major features. But has deductive elements as well, which can be traced back to PROLOG.

There are also physical units of measurement such as 3 Newtons * 4 seconds / 3 meter * 2 ergs / 12 kg. I followed the spec from Van Snyder at JPL, who asked the FORTRAN committee to add it decades ago. Only Frink has a stronger unit system.

There are about 70 new things in Beads all told.

I hope that people take it for a spin. If people aren't willing to try new things, how are we going to move forward? You can learn the entire Beads product from soup to nuts in less time than to get half way through a CSS book. Simplicity is a virtue, and thankfully Beads has zero category theory, with no Functors and Monads or Java method factories, etc.

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#179

Post by magicmouse » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:23 AM UTC

feoren wrote: post #129

blacktriangle wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the exact same reaction. You never want to shit on somebody's ambition, after all they might be a revolutionary, but at the same time the whole batteries-included thing is just setup to fail. You have an embedded graph database? Why? This is just a symptom of developers general disrespect for the depth and complexity of databases. There's a reason we have so many different different databases, those difference…

> This is just a symptom of developers general disrespect for the depth and complexity of databases. The entire Beads project is a symptom of the developer's disrespect for the depth and complexity of every other programming tool in existence.

I take exception to that inflammatory comment. You have never met me, so how could you possibly know what I do and do not respect? The integration of the database is so i can deliver time travel debugging properly, which i believe will be a mainstream feature within 5 years in almost every language, as the productivity improvement is just too great to ignore.

Please refrain from personal attacks, and take Beads for a spin, and let the work speak for itself.

It has very few errors at this point, is quite usable, compiles very quickly, and makes a great web app that stretches like rubber. There are a few products like Beads, such as Elm, and Yazz Pilot (now called visual javascript). but they are all sufficiently different to be an interesting avenue of study.

Re: Beads: Computer language and toolchain

#180

Post by magicmouse » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:32 AM UTC

megameter wrote: post #74

catblast01 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. The guy posts with his real name on YouTube so this is like TempleOS and the creator is non anonymous, quite active on Reddit, and not very young (as if the style of graphics wasn’t a dead giveaway, like a time machine to the early 90s). In any event I engaged with the creator before and what I can say is the conversations are entirely one-sided, in fact some of the most I have personally experienced. Will take…

While I've not interacted with the author, his Twitter and blog opines on all kinds of subjects and has the firm, authoritative tone of an older person who is not exactly ignorant but who doesn't recognize the depth of his own indoctrination, the silencing of the internal critic. He has all the answers already. And, really, that's the only kind of person that could make something of this encompassing but simultaneous…

Have you read any of the reference manual? Why do you suggest the product is incoherent? it has been highly polished, and have written tens of thousands of lines of code in the language, and it works very well. A nice balance of concise vs. readable.

What indoctrination are you referring exactly? I don't understand the motivation for personal attacks on the author of a product you haven't even tried yet.

For those people who would prefer not to have to waste 100 hours of their time mastering CSS, the 10 hours it takes to learn Beads might be a better bargain.