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Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

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Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#191

Post by mariusor »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #112
socialdemocrat wrote: post #100

Why do people spend so much energy shooting down a language nobody uses? If you don’t like it you don’t have to use it. I would hate to be the creator of Hare and get so much crap for simply daring to exist. He is making a language he likes and wants to use. There are probably some people who like it and find it useful. Good for them! A lot of us have dreams of building our own language. He is following his passions…

If the author of Hare didn't want feedback on his language, or didn't want other people to use his language, he shouldn't have advertised it in blog posts and on sites like https://harelang.org/ , which is clearly an advertisement for the language. As it happens, he has. You might think "nobody will use the language", but if nobody pushes back and says why people shouldn't use the language, perhaps people will start…

So what you're saying is basically: "he's asking for it", right?

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#192

Post by eatonphil »

lawl wrote: post #76
celeritascelery wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust still considers itself a “systems programming language” . They are moving Rust into the Linux kernel and android drivers. It doesn’t get any more “systems programming” then that. But you are correct about go, it doesn’t give the programmer enough control to be used at that level.

> But you are correct about go, it doesn’t give the programmer enough control to be used at that level. What I like about go is that I can go full unsafe.Pointer if i want to, and do whatever I want. The other thing I really like, is that they did such a good job discouraging it that i frequently hear people complain about go having pointers but not even letting you have fun with them. The problem isn't that go doesn…

You can't even call a non-Go library without switching to cgo, which contradictorily basically everyone says not to use.

Leaving aside the GC, until Go has a real FFI it's hard to to imagine it being a really great fit for systems programming when the systems are all not written in Go.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#193

Post by rowanG077 »

flyingfences wrote: post #184
rowanG077 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your point is. I didn't claim memory unsafe languages aren't used, they obviously are. C is in fact not an easy language to verify. There have gone trillions of dollars into that and it's still not solved. You can't verify C. You might be able to verify a subset of C. But if you are in any position to choose any other language you should run, run, run quickly and far away from C.

My point is that your metaphor about "not [being] allowed to use memory unsafe languages" to build a car is completely backwards -- safety-critical embedded systems use C to avoid the abstractions introduced by higher-level languages.

It's not backwards. C is used out of necessity not because it's such a great language. Safety-critical embedded systems use C because they have to. Not because it's nice. Claiming they do because C is such a great language to write safety-critical software in is a special kind of Stockholm syndrome.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#194

Post by staticassertion »

BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #183
staticassertion wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We license people to drive and have a legal system for dealing with irresponsible drivers.

Companies have policies for software security. Industries have regulations.

The most common policy will be for SOC2, ISO27001. There's virtually nothing about software security in there, other than scanning for vulnerabilities. Everything else is about controls on infrastructure, threat modeling, that sort of thing.

It's not really relevant.

Besides, none of those have to do with software engineers. Compliance doesn't imply any individual responsibility.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#195

Post by staticassertion »

0des wrote: post #69
capableweb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no fists in this fight, but wanted some clarification. Are you saying the reason Rust is now being integrated into the Kernel instead of Golang is because of the success of evangelists, not because of the merit of the language itself? I'm not involved in Kernel development myself, but if I was, I'd see your statement as a big hit in the face that we don't know what we're doing, if they (Kernel developers) are…

Its not existing kernel devs that suddenly switched to rust. It is the incoming cohort.

Cool, so everyone can just ignore you then, since this is entirely incorrect.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#196

Post by usefulcat »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #100

Why do people spend so much energy shooting down a language nobody uses? If you don’t like it you don’t have to use it. I would hate to be the creator of Hare and get so much crap for simply daring to exist. He is making a language he likes and wants to use. There are probably some people who like it and find it useful. Good for them! A lot of us have dreams of building our own language. He is following his passions…

The author of the TFA isn't criticizing the language, he's criticizing a particular example, and he's claiming that hash tables are generally really useful.

In the example, maybe the static size of the table is fine, and maybe not being able to remove items from the table is fine, but unless maybe it's some sort of cache, it's almost never ok to assume that there will never be any hash collisions.

I mean, if you don't want to include hash tables in your language or library, fine, but using a bad example to attempt to justify it after the fact is.. not good.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#197

Post by duped »

steaminghams wrote: post #155
mumblemumble wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That strikes me as another C-ism that didn't deserve to be carried forward into a 21st century language. There's a reason we call it "dependency hell" and not "happy fun fussing with dependency version conflicts among projects that are completely unrelated except that you happen to be using the same computer to work on them time."

The state of the art in package management could be considered Nix and Guix and those are both operating system level package managers and thats why they are better than npm or pypi or cargo, as the aforementioned language specific package managers _dont_ handle dependency hell as native dependencies exist. they all have the same problem as 'they work on my computer' and also encourage this ecosystem of thousands of…

I've never had a "works on my machine" bug when dependencies are managed per project. The only time I have ever had them is with global/os-level dependencies. And I've used cargo/npm a lot in the last few years.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#198

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

staticassertion wrote: post #194
BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies have policies for software security. Industries have regulations.

The most common policy will be for SOC2, ISO27001. There's virtually nothing about software security in there, other than scanning for vulnerabilities. Everything else is about controls on infrastructure, threat modeling, that sort of thing. It's not really relevant. Besides, none of those have to do with software engineers. Compliance doesn't imply any individual responsibility.

The most common policy for what? I've worked in defense and there are stringent security requirements for applications and servers, which programs written in manual memory management languages would likely fail. "Some existing policies are bad" is not a convincing argument that hare shouldn't exist.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#199

Post by karmakaze »

throwaway17_17 wrote: post #158
Shish2k wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if we’d had the opportunity to complain about PHP or JS back in their early days, and had the opportunity to fix some of their awful decisions _before_ they became practically set in stone?

There is a distinct difference between PHP, JS and Hare. Hare is being developed and designed with a particular point of view by a developer and early adopters who are passionately supportive of that POV. PHP and JS were both thrown together with minimal direction and to achieve specific goals in as fast a time as possible (if I am remembering both languages begins correctly). It could be possible that another langua…

I think the critique is more valuable for other readers like the non-Hare users in these comment threads and in particular language designers, than at Hare developers. If it can inform Hare development to make a better language that's great too. If they choose their path ignoring it, that's their prerogative, but at least it was expressed and given a chance for adapting.

Re: Criticizing Hare language approach for generic data structures

#200

Post by HL33tibCe7 »

mariusor wrote: post #191
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the author of Hare didn't want feedback on his language, or didn't want other people to use his language, he shouldn't have advertised it in blog posts and on sites like https://harelang.org/ , which is clearly an advertisement for the language. As it happens, he has. You might think "nobody will use the language", but if nobody pushes back and says why people shouldn't use the language, perhaps people will start…

So what you're saying is basically: "he's asking for it", right?

That's the point I make in the first paragraph, essentially. But the second paragraph is another reason.
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