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LambdaNative – Cross-platform mobile apps in Scheme

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Re: LambdaNative – Cross-platform mobile apps in Scheme

#31

Post by flavio81 »

winter_blue wrote: post #14
wooby wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more readable ...to you. It's possible I suck at what I do, but somehow I've enjoyed building, shipping, and maintaining services and applications in dynamic languages. I used a lot of Clojure, and it was basically smooth sailing, even on teams. Along the way I used various statically typed languages, such as C# and a tiny bit of SML (to be able to read Okasaki), and enjoyed them too. Just not as much. Anyway, I ca…

You haven't grounded your assertions on any logical arguments. I've worked on large code bases, both in statically typed languags, and dynamically typed ones, and the latter was a far worse experience than the former. Even just in terms of reading and understanding what was going, there was no way to know the structure of objects passed to various function. A function would take an object foo, which had some arbitary…

While you persist on your belief system, a big, award-winning code controlled the NASA Deep Space One out in space for several days. Done 100% in a dynamic language.

A really big and complex program, is right now doing airline planning for over 800 companies, taking into account 4000 airports. To get an idea of the complexity look at this pdf:

http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...

Both examples are software programmed in a dynamically typed language, Common Lisp.

And in that highly dynamic language, should any bug appear in production, it can be patched without stopping the system and of course without having to recompile the whole code. This bears repeating:

The system can be patched without stopping it and of course without having to recompile the whole code. That is, patched at runtime by correcting the offending function and re-attaching the new version of that function to the running system.

Try doing that with your favorite statically-typed language.

Your arguments are just common beliefs of the typical developer who is lacking more experience in the field of developing real-world systems. You are just regurgitating common myths, and in the process, calling "fucked up mentally" people probably wiser (more experienced and learned) than you.

And BTW,

If you think all dynamic languages are equal to javascript, which is not only dynamically typed but also weakly typed, then you need to try more dynamic languages. For example strongly typed dynamic languages.

I wish i had $1 everytime a developer mixes up "dynamic typing" with "weak typing"

Re: LambdaNative – Cross-platform mobile apps in Scheme

#32

Post by kazinator »

winter_blue wrote: post #14
wooby wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more readable ...to you. It's possible I suck at what I do, but somehow I've enjoyed building, shipping, and maintaining services and applications in dynamic languages. I used a lot of Clojure, and it was basically smooth sailing, even on teams. Along the way I used various statically typed languages, such as C# and a tiny bit of SML (to be able to read Okasaki), and enjoyed them too. Just not as much. Anyway, I ca…

You haven't grounded your assertions on any logical arguments. I've worked on large code bases, both in statically typed languags, and dynamically typed ones, and the latter was a far worse experience than the former. Even just in terms of reading and understanding what was going, there was no way to know the structure of objects passed to various function. A function would take an object foo, which had some arbitary…

> some arbitary strucutre and set of fields that were not defined or specified anywhere

This is not a necessary feature of dynamic languages; some have proper object systems with class declarations.

Dynamic languages can contain crap design decisions, like using functions to simulate objects and classes, and that will reflect badly on the programs.

Re: LambdaNative – Cross-platform mobile apps in Scheme

#33

Post by eggy »

gerbilscheme wrote: post #22

Gambit is a fantastic scheme system. The performance you get from it exceeds even SBCL in my limited use cases. Additionally, Gerbil Scheme ( http://cons.io ), built on Gambit, has expanded syntax like racket's #lang features for dsls. Several packages have also been create for it for most of the things I need.

I used to play around with Gambit, but never saw Gerbil before. Thanks for the link. When do you use it over Gambit?

Re: LambdaNative – Cross-platform mobile apps in Scheme

#34

Post by vorg »

winter_blue wrote: post #9

It's a bit inaccurate of them to present the results of a 17-year old paper (published in 2000), as empirical evidence that development time in Scheme is shorter. These days there are plethora of language choices on the JVM, and if I were devloping a multi-platform app today, I would personally choose Kotlin along with the Intel Multi-OS Engine: https://software.intel.com/en-us/multi-os-engine Part of my motivation t…

> prefer Kotlin over Clojure is that I am a huge proponent of static typing

If you're into static typing on the JVM, then Kotlin is the best choice because it's got the best-of-breed types. If you're into dynamic typing on the JVM, then Clojure is the best choice because it's got the best-of-breed macros.

What I can't fathom is why anyone would choose a language that's dynamically typed but without any macros, or only tacked on static typing later on as an afterthought. Apache Groovy comes to mind for the JVM as a language which did both.

Edit: Macros are great for simple elimination of repetitive code in bulk tests, but Groovy's Spock hacks into the statement labels and operator overloading in a clumsy attempt at an alternative. And Groovy's backers only added some static typing in version 2.0 because they were afraid of someone else's addon (Groovy++) taking away their control.

Re: LambdaNative – Cross-platform mobile apps in Scheme

#35

Post by 1337p337 »

_delirium wrote: post #21
1337p337 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock Scheme does not have much in the way of interfaces to the outside world (long story) but there are several Scheme variants where people are doing larger projects. Racket is sort of a Scheme variant, and it seems to be the most popular, but Chicken and Guile are also pretty popular (as far as Scheme variants go) for real-world use cases.

Gambit is another one that has some real-world usage (it's what LambdaNative uses).

Yep, that's why I left it off the list.

I've actually written some LambdaNative. Unfortunately, we ended up going with Cordova, but you can guess which one was more fun to write.

Re: LambdaNative – Cross-platform mobile apps in Scheme

#36

Post by winter_blue »

nikofeyn wrote: post #20
winter_blue wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't grounded your assertions on any logical arguments. I've worked on large code bases, both in statically typed languags, and dynamically typed ones, and the latter was a far worse experience than the former. Even just in terms of reading and understanding what was going, there was no way to know the structure of objects passed to various function. A function would take an object foo, which had some arbitary…

> You haven't grounded your assertions on any logical arguments. neither did you. in fact, you italicized probably the least objective portion, that of staically typed languages being more readable. and that's likely to be the opposite case for most people. the draw for most dymaically typed languages is that they are often quite readable. sometimes people prefer different stuff, and that's all the commenter was sayi…

That's ridiculous. I most intentionally italicizes it -- precisely because readability and comprehensabitltiy is the biggest benefit of static typing.

When I was younger (a teenager), I valued static typing for the safety it brought. After working at a few companies, I now value it more for readability & comprehensability, than anything else.

Re: LambdaNative – Cross-platform mobile apps in Scheme

#37

Post by winter_blue »

flavio81 wrote: post #31
winter_blue wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't grounded your assertions on any logical arguments. I've worked on large code bases, both in statically typed languags, and dynamically typed ones, and the latter was a far worse experience than the former. Even just in terms of reading and understanding what was going, there was no way to know the structure of objects passed to various function. A function would take an object foo, which had some arbitary…

While you persist on your belief system, a big, award-winning code controlled the NASA Deep Space One out in space for several days. Done 100% in a dynamic language. A really big and complex program, is right now doing airline planning for over 800 companies, taking into account 4000 airports. To get an idea of the complexity look at this pdf: http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com... Both examp…

I know very well what the difference between weak vs dynamic typing is.

Weak typing allows automatic implicit conversion between types.

While I'm not a big fan of it, but I don't mind weak typing as much as I have a problem with dynamic typing. A statically typed language can be weakly typed.

Modern C++ for instance, can automatically convert from an object of types A to B, if the you provide a single-argument constructor for B that takes something of type A as an argument. It's sometimes neat as it leads to more succinct/cleaner code.

You talk about NASA using Common Lisp to update the program while it's running. But this feature has nothing to do with dynamic typing, and could be implemented/supported by a statically typed language. In fact the JVM had/has a feature that allows live updating methods/classes while the program is running.

Common LISP is a cool lanaguge with a lot of cool features. For instance, many LISPs' macro system are very cool, and we could implemented far cleaner / safer / more hygienic versions of them in dynamically typed languages with.

The only benefit of dynamically typed languages is that it makes the work of a prototype interpreter implementor far easier.

Re: LambdaNative – Cross-platform mobile apps in Scheme

#38

Post by winter_blue »

kazinator wrote: post #32
winter_blue wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't grounded your assertions on any logical arguments. I've worked on large code bases, both in statically typed languags, and dynamically typed ones, and the latter was a far worse experience than the former. Even just in terms of reading and understanding what was going, there was no way to know the structure of objects passed to various function. A function would take an object foo, which had some arbitary…

> some arbitary strucutre and set of fields that were not defined or specified anywhere This is not a necessary feature of dynamic languages; some have proper object systems with class declarations. Dynamic languages can contain crap design decisions, like using functions to simulate objects and classes, and that will reflect badly on the programs.

But do any of these languages have functionality that enforces that only fields/methods that are defined are accessed? Do they enforce any apsect, of what might be called the (data) scheme?
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