Urbit: A clean-slate functional OS • Hacker News Board

Re: Urbit: A clean-slate functional OS

#181

Post by mietek » Fri, Sep 27, 2013, 7:00 AM UTC

urbit wrote: post #121

colanderman wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you could say it's a subset of unification, as it is. It definitely is, and a limiting one at that. How does Hoon infer the type error in whatever is the Hoon equivalent of the, say, JavaScript expression (a == b && b == 5 && a == "foo"), where a and b are function parameters?

But my previous reply is a little content-free, as what you're really asking for is how we solve the same problem that typeclasses solve in Haskell. Very briefly, there's two ways of asking whether a caller can change the type of a parameter. The normal way is to say, are all the possible values of the caller's type in the set of nouns that the parameter defines? This is what I call "geometric polymorphism." But ther…

It's difficult to have a conversation with someone using their own terms for well-established concepts.

If I understand you correctly, what you're calling "geometric polymorphism" is usually called structural typing or subtyping, and what you're calling "generic polymorphism" is usually called duck typing.

Duck typing isn't amenable to static typechecking, so it's not comparable to Haskell's typeclasses.

Re: Urbit: A clean-slate functional OS

#182

Post by mietek » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 1:29 AM UTC

mietek wrote: post #181

urbit wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my previous reply is a little content-free, as what you're really asking for is how we solve the same problem that typeclasses solve in Haskell. Very briefly, there's two ways of asking whether a caller can change the type of a parameter. The normal way is to say, are all the possible values of the caller's type in the set of nouns that the parameter defines? This is what I call "geometric polymorphism." But ther…

It's difficult to have a conversation with someone using their own terms for well-established concepts. If I understand you correctly, what you're calling "geometric polymorphism" is usually called structural typing or subtyping, and what you're calling "generic polymorphism" is usually called duck typing. Duck typing isn't amenable to static typechecking, so it's not comparable to Haskell's typeclasses.

Looks like I'm behind on my programming language theory research! Typed Racket and soon, Typed Clojure, are actually adding optional static typing to duck-typed languages. Are you doing something similar?

Re: Urbit: A clean-slate functional OS

#183

Post by offensivehandle » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 11:09 PM UTC

Okay, since you want comments here, here I'll put mine.

The reason you were so successful in coming up with a new political philosophy is that your "I'm a Martian" trick got you think thoughts that no respectable person would be caught dead thinking.

There aren't the same taboos in computer system design, so while you can refer to the systems people use every day as gigabytes of, what was it, of ass fucking more ass, there's nothing you say that I haven't already heard.

I'm still waiting for the Python of functional programming. Paul Graham announced Arc when I was in middle school. Maybe it will be released as the scripting system in Half-Life 3.

Being an alien from Alpha Centauri, and observing the growing collection of programming languages, what do you think people keep designing new ones for? Why do some Urplatians argue for Scheme and other Urplatians for Python?

Rather than asking the question of 'what is a programming language', and trying to design the axiomatically simplest possible thing, try asking the question of 'how do people use programming languages'.

Is your system a bit of syntax regularization away from the pseudocode people scribble on paper to explain algorithms to each other? No, that's Python.

Is your system something that compiles down to use the bare metal to its fullest potential while maintaining as much creature comforts as possible? No, that's C++.

Is your system something with an ancient history of having a solid ABI, that in fact every other language's ABI is described with? No, that's C.

Is your system a heap of cruft upon kludges with the original intention of providing programming access to a hypertext document? That's Javascript.

I wouldn't want to write a regex as anything but a regex.

In conclusion, you're asking a question that's been asked before and getting an answer that's been gotten before. But, maybe it is finally time for functional programming to come back. Maybe you're a popular enough guy to get people to use your system.

Re: Urbit: A clean-slate functional OS

#184

Post by davidgerard » Sun, Sep 29, 2013, 9:24 AM UTC

offensivehandle wrote: post #183

Okay, since you want comments here, here I'll put mine. The reason you were so successful in coming up with a new political philosophy is that your "I'm a Martian" trick got you think thoughts that no respectable person would be caught dead thinking. There aren't the same taboos in computer system design, so while you can refer to the systems people use every day as gigabytes of, what was it, of ass fucking more ass,…

"Being an alien from Alpha Centauri, and observing the growing collection of programming languages, what do you think people keep designing new ones for? Why do some Urplatians argue for Scheme and other Urplatians for Python?"

Typical mind fallacy. http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/

Most people model other people as just like themselves, plus or minus a diff. The trouble is that they don't understand just how wide-ranging human thoughts and feelings can be, and assume they will understand and be able to model based on the diff, even if the diff is larger than their whole mind.

It's why geeks keep coming up with "intuitively obvious" schemes no-one else can understand, and why engineers are routinely surprised at what actual end users do with their products in user testing.

So people write new languages that suit their personal peculiar ways of thinking. Thankfully, many are quite aware that this is what they are doing and don't claim universality.

This is why Urbit is art: translating numbers and ASCII characters into nonsense syllables that you are actually expected to pronounce and think in suits Yarvin's mind, even as it leaves me thinking "there is such a thing as being too much of a Borges fan". Which is absolutely fine. But this is why Urbit is art (an expression of a unique personal vision), not anything people are actually going to use without similar levels of confusion to the present.

For an example of fully rampant Typical Mind Fallacy in Urbit, see the security document: http://www.urbit.org/2013/08/22/Chapter-6-security.html About two-thirds of the way down, you can actually see Yarvin transform into Moldbug and start pontificating on how humans communicating on a network should work, and never mind the observable evidence of how they actually have behaved whenever each of the conditions he describes have obtained. The very first thing people will do with the Urbit system is try to mess with its assumptions, in ways that its creators literally could not foresee (due to Typical Mind Fallacy), though they might have been reasonably expected to (given the real world as data).

Re: Urbit: A clean-slate functional OS

#185

Post by samth » Thu, Oct 03, 2013, 6:22 PM UTC

zzzmarcus wrote: post #72

Just some background, this is by Mencius Moldbug, a.k.a. Curtis Yarvin, a.k.a. C. Guy Yarvin of Unqualified Reservations fame. It's been in the works for a long time and is certainly a serious project. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-f... http://moronlab.blogspot.com/

The fact that it's by a guy who's an unreconstructed racist and thinks the US is inevitably headed for anarcho-capitalist dystopia (except that he doesn't think it's dystopian) certainly reinforces my initial opinion that it's nuts.