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Why programming languages matter [video]

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Re: Why programming languages matter [video]

#21

Post by aidenn0 »

bear8642 wrote: post #11
nomel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have any good counterpoints to this? From my, naive, perspective, this seems to be relatively true. I've always assumed that, by now, I would be able to write code, in a semi mainstream language, and it would be made somewhat parallel, by the compiler. No need for threads, or me thinking of it. There's projects like https://polly.llvm.org , but I guess I assumed there would be more progress through the de…

Array languages, such as APL and others, tend to be easily parallisable given primitives tend to focus on intent and how to transform data rather than imperative operations. Some of the SIMD operations feel very reminicent of APL primitives

So your best bet for a modern language is one from 1966?

Re: Why programming languages matter [video]

#22

Post by aidenn0 »

mjfl wrote: post #4

Very little innovation in programming languages has happened regarding new realities at the hardware level especially transition from serial to parallel execution.

For a field in which a large fraction (if not a majority) of the people in industry have (nominally at least) science degrees, CS research takes a fairly long time to penetrate into industry. Rust 1.0 had few, if any, features that weren't demonstrated in academia 30 years earlier.

Re: Why programming languages matter [video]

#23

Post by dugmartin »

nomel wrote: post #6
mjfl wrote: post #4

Very little innovation in programming languages has happened regarding new realities at the hardware level especially transition from serial to parallel execution.

Does anyone have any good counterpoints to this? From my, naive, perspective, this seems to be relatively true. I've always assumed that, by now, I would be able to write code, in a semi mainstream language, and it would be made somewhat parallel, by the compiler. No need for threads, or me thinking of it. There's projects like https://polly.llvm.org , but I guess I assumed there would be more progress through the de…

Languages like Erlang (or Elixir) that naturally split programs into isolated processes with local state and that communicate via message passing map well onto multi core systems. No need to have the compiler figure that out for you - instead it is expressed directly in the code.

Re: Why programming languages matter [video]

#24

Post by wredue »

sidlls wrote: post #19
epgui wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware was for a very long time a limiting factor in the practicality of FP. For most general applications, today this is a relative non-issue. FP is also particularly well suited for cloud computing and parallel computation.

"FP" camps tend to come in two flavors: "I'm a mathematician writing a computer program, and all problems will be made to look like math problems even if it means the program becomes an inscrutable mess of types and dense syntax" and "functional-ish idioms are included". The latter is useful, sometimes, for cloud computing and parallel computation; the former tends to have too many problems (slow build, slow executio…

Is “wanting evidence for constant silver bullet claims that never actually pan out” really “obviously biased”?

It’s not just you. Functional Programming really does not adequately solve any of the problems that its advocates claim while refusing to provide any evidence.

And it’s not “biased” to write these claims off.

Re: Why programming languages matter [video]

#25

Post by jerf »

aidenn0 wrote: post #22
mjfl wrote: post #4

Very little innovation in programming languages has happened regarding new realities at the hardware level especially transition from serial to parallel execution.

For a field in which a large fraction (if not a majority) of the people in industry have (nominally at least) science degrees, CS research takes a fairly long time to penetrate into industry. Rust 1.0 had few, if any, features that weren't demonstrated in academia 30 years earlier.

It is a lot easier to write a paper demonstrating some feature than to write a production-quality ecosystem based on that feature. There isn't much either the academic side nor the engineering side can do about that.

And it's not like every academic idea that worked in a paper has worked as well as hoped when someone tried to turn it into a production-quality ecosystem.

Re: Why programming languages matter [video]

#26

Post by epgui »

wredue wrote: post #24
sidlls wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"FP" camps tend to come in two flavors: "I'm a mathematician writing a computer program, and all problems will be made to look like math problems even if it means the program becomes an inscrutable mess of types and dense syntax" and "functional-ish idioms are included". The latter is useful, sometimes, for cloud computing and parallel computation; the former tends to have too many problems (slow build, slow executio…

Is “wanting evidence for constant silver bullet claims that never actually pan out” really “obviously biased”? It’s not just you. Functional Programming really does not adequately solve any of the problems that its advocates claim while refusing to provide any evidence. And it’s not “biased” to write these claims off.

I don't know what "silver bullet" claims you've heard, but I'm not sure how that is relevant to this thread. I don't think I've made any outlandish claims, or any claims that aren't substantiated by a preponderance of academic literature.

Re: Why programming languages matter [video]

#28

Post by epgui »

sidlls wrote: post #19
epgui wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware was for a very long time a limiting factor in the practicality of FP. For most general applications, today this is a relative non-issue. FP is also particularly well suited for cloud computing and parallel computation.

"FP" camps tend to come in two flavors: "I'm a mathematician writing a computer program, and all problems will be made to look like math problems even if it means the program becomes an inscrutable mess of types and dense syntax" and "functional-ish idioms are included". The latter is useful, sometimes, for cloud computing and parallel computation; the former tends to have too many problems (slow build, slow executio…

> all problems will be made to look like math problems

All problems that can be solved with code are math problems. Proofs and programs are isomorphic (see the Curry-Howard correspondence).

---

Edit: this is a factually accurate comment, delivered dispassionately. It's not controversial or new-- it's something we've known for longer than the C language has existed. Why the downvote? Like I said, see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspon...

Re: Why programming languages matter [video]

#29

Post by epgui »

charcircuit wrote: post #18
epgui wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware was for a very long time a limiting factor in the practicality of FP. For most general applications, today this is a relative non-issue. FP is also particularly well suited for cloud computing and parallel computation.

The parent comment was talking about aligning programming languages with the hardware. I am not commenting about the viablity of those languages, but rather that if your goal is to write the most performant code by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the hardware than using fp concepts is not the way to do it.

I feel like in both of your comments you've changed the topic slightly. I responded to the following comment, which I interpreted literally:

> Very little innovation in programming languages has happened regarding new realities at the hardware level especially transition from serial to parallel execution

Re: Why programming languages matter [video]

#30

Post by nh2 »

epgui wrote: post #14
mjfl wrote: post #4

Very little innovation in programming languages has happened regarding new realities at the hardware level especially transition from serial to parallel execution.

Except for all the research around functional programming? This is like when I hear people claim that physics has not advanced in the last 50-70 years.

Futhark (https://futhark-lang.org) is an example of a functional language specifically designed for writing "normal" high-level functional code that compiles to parallel execution.
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