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Dada, an experimental new programming language

dada-lang.org

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Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#191

Post by 4star3star »

mihaic wrote: post #166

I've written a bit of Rust, and I was left with mixed feelings, that seem to be still the same here: - loved the memory safety patterns when compared to the horrible things that you can do with C++ - found almost every thing where it was different to have a harder to parse syntax, that I could never get used to. The implicit return at the end of a statement for instance make it harder for me to visually parse what's…

> all keywords should be obviously pronounceable

I hear you. Internally, I always pronounced "var" as rhymes with "care", but then a colleague pronounced it "var" as rhymes with "car". I think the same guy pronounced "char" like char-broiled, whereas I had thought of it like "care". And he would say "jay-SON" for json, which I pronounced like Jason.

How would you feel about a notation that is not meant to be pronounced at all?

+Employee {

}

where + indicates a class definition.

:Rename() where : indicates a class method.

~DoStuff() where ~ indicates a static function

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#192

Post by BoppreH »

nu11ptr wrote: post #104
BoppreH wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that, but never seen an example*. If the type system complains of an issue in other code after a local change, doesn't that mean that the other code indeed needs updating (modulo false positives, which should be rarer with granular types). Or is this about libraries and API compatibility? * I have seen examples of spooky-action-at-a-distance where usage of a function changes its inferred type, but that goe…

Try writing a larger OCaml program and not using interface files. It definitely happens.

I've never used OCaml, so I'm curious to what exactly happens, and if language design can prevent that.

If I download a random project and delete the interface files, will that be enough to see issues, or is it something that happens when writing new code?

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#193

Post by naasking »

jerf wrote: post #174
nu11ptr wrote: post #96

I like the idea, but please no "async/await". In a higher level language green threads like Go has are the correct answer IMO (and I'm not a Go fan, but I feel they got this part right). Gradual typing is interesting, but I wonder if necessary. Static typing doesn't have to feel like a burden and could make it hard to reason about performance. I think more type inference would be better than gradually typed (like OCa…

"Gradual typing is interesting, but I wonder if necessary." Open question: Are there any languages that can be used in a (decent [1]) REPL, that are strongly typed, but do not have Hindley–Milner-based type inference? We have multiple concrete proofs that you can have a REPL with Hindley-Milner inference, but I'm curious if this is perhaps a concession to the difficulty of a strongly-typed REPL without a deeply infer…

Scala has a REPL. It uses HM, but has limitations on type inference due to subtyping.

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#194

Post by twic »

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/

Changing it is perfectly reasonable, but specifically advertising that you've done it in a footnote is extremely Rust community.

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#196

Post by mattgreenrocks »

BoppreH wrote: post #63
happens wrote: post #25

It's weird, I want pretty much the exact opposite of this: a language with the expressive type system and syntax of rust, but with a garbage collector and a runtime at the cost performance. Basically go, but with rusts type system. I'm aware that there are a few languages that come close to this (crystal iirc), but in the end it's adoption and the ecosystem that keeps me from using them.

I've always wondered if global type inference wouldn't be a game changer. Maybe it could be fast enough with caching and careful language semantics? You could still have your IDE showing you type hints as documentation, but have inferred types to be more fine grained than humans have patience for. Track units, container emptiness, numeric ranges, side effects and idempotency, tainted values for security, maybe even e…

Type inference is powerful but probably too powerful for module-level (e.g. global) declarations.

Despite type systems being powerful enough to figure out what types should be via unification, I don't think asking programmers to write the types of module declarations is too much. This is one area where forcing work on the programmer is really useful to ensure that they are tracking boundary interface changes correctly.

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#197

Post by cmrdporcupine »

rob74 wrote: post #181
zarathustreal wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we’re all saying the same things here. No one wants to hear complaints about pronouns

Actually, what I don't want is a discussion about pronouns being at the top of the comments. Aren't there more interesting topics to discuss about this project?!

Indeed, far more annoying is that someone grousing about the TFA update about pronouns "seems like a very [subsection of] HN community thing to do."

And yet here I am, N levels down in this thread, griping about it. Oops.

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#198

Post by naasking »

mihaic wrote: post #166

I've written a bit of Rust, and I was left with mixed feelings, that seem to be still the same here: - loved the memory safety patterns when compared to the horrible things that you can do with C++ - found almost every thing where it was different to have a harder to parse syntax, that I could never get used to. The implicit return at the end of a statement for instance make it harder for me to visually parse what's…

> Code in general is hard for me to mentally read. I know it sounds nitpicky, but to me all keywords should be obviously pronounceable,

Have you tried Ada?

> so something like "func" instead of "fn" would be mandatory.

What about no keywords, like:

    x => ...func body

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#199

Post by sorenjan »

javier_cardona wrote: post #160
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.

That does make it a lot better, but at the same time makes the footnote even more of a deliberate statement that could have been left out.

Re: Dada, an experimental new programming language

#200

Post by anentropic »

sanderjd wrote: post #100
overstay8930 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have awoken the ocaml gang

Yeah, ocaml is awesome! Frankly, if it had a more familiar syntax but the same semantics, I think its popularity would have exploded in the last 15 years. It's silly, but syntax is the first thing people see, and it is only human to form judgments during those moments of first contact.

Funny, because the semicolons and braces syntax is one of the things that puts me off Rust a bit, and I was not excited to see it in Dada
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