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Impending kOS

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Re: Impending kOS

#31

Post by dang »

geocar wrote: post #21
uberalex wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the issue is that just measuring simplicity in terms of number of lines is a bad metric. You can have extremely complex expressions in a single statement that are at least as hard to read and debug as an equivalent, much longer piece of code that employs temporary variables and single-purpose statements.

I disagree fundamentally. I have noticed every page I scroll causes a comprehensive loss of around 90%, so in reading something that is 10 pagefuls long, I might only be able to produce a tiny part of the program. Your milage may vary. I find not scrolling, and just moving my eyes, I rapidly absorb the program, and I find most bugs just by reading the code . This practice is absolutely impossible for me if I have to…

Yes, the research literature on software development has consistently found that code size is the best measurement of complexity and predictor of error rates. (Sorry I don't have citations handy but we've discussed this many times on HN, and there's a recent study in the book "Making Software" that adds to it.) What's interesting is how strongly this goes against what most people think they know about good programming and clear code.

Re: Impending kOS

#32

Post by sxp »

beagle3 wrote: post #14
outside1234 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an understatement. If we are allowed code like this, I can write an editor in ONE line of JavaScript. :)

Note that his lines are Can you write this editor in one line of less than 6000 chars of javascript (without a "textarea")?

Someone skilled in writing compact JS probably can. People write amazing programs in 1k & 4k of JS: http://www.google.com/webhp?#q=javascript+4k

Re: Impending kOS

#33

Post by tlrobinson »

bshimmin wrote: post #3

Here's the text editor they're talking about: http://www.kparc.com/edit.k The code is, well, not the easiest to understand.

Could someone who can parse (reverse engineer?) this write up an explanation? (if you exist)

Re: Impending kOS

#34

Post by geocar »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #12

> kOS is coming. Nothing will be the same afterwards. There seems to be this strange idea going around that if we just get the right tool, everything else is going to change forever. I see this a lot with people trying to create IDEs that let non-programmers create programs without really knowing how to code. But the thing is, most people just don't have anything worth coding. The problem isn't that the tools don't e…

If I am from another planet, and say I don't know why programs are so big and slow and buggy, and the most complicated program you see I've produced is a glorified calculator, it's too easy to be patronising and say well, that's because you haven't done anything complicated.

However if I then show you a programming language, a database engine (similar in capability to SQL but around 1000x faster), a graphical desktop with icons, mouse, editors, filesystems, ISR, and so on- and it's still under 400 lines of C code, then maybe it's easier to have this conversation that I think we need to have: That maybe all you programmers have simply been doing it wrong, and there's something fundamentally wrong with the way you and everyone else programs computers.

I think most programmers take so much offence from the thesis: that everyone programs wrongly (or badly) and that a fundamental shift in the way we program could make programming much better, that it's been difficult to actually work on this problem. Just look at all the people who are complaining about the text editor being difficult to read without saying I can't read this, and I want to get better.

And I think it should be obvious: You've built bridges for thousands of years, so you expect you're pretty good at it now, and yet there are still improvements in bridgemaking today; why do you expect programming to be any different? Why do you have "best practices" for programming if you've only been doing it for a few decades and don't really know how to do it yet?

Maybe it's much easier to think we're working on giving non-programmers the ability to program, but we're not: we're trying to make programming suck less.

Re: Impending kOS

#35

Post by viksit »

The last line of TFA reads like the beginning of some sort of movie in the drama/thriller category. "kOS is coming. Nothing will be the same afterwards."

That's what irritated me most.

What I'd like to understand is - what led the author to this particular conclusion? Is it the fact that this language is super expressive and concise? Is it that it routinely [1] outperforms its C counterparts even if it ultimately translates to C? Is the Z graphical interface so superior that it'll blow the pants off Cocoa and Quartz and X.org or Wayland or what have you? Why would one rewrite emacs or vim on it? I don't want some basic 4 line text editor - I would like to be productive. Why would Mozilla spend energy porting firefox to it? Or Google, chrome? Or bash?

Simply talking about the history of K/kdb+ and how brilliant its creator is simply doesn't help the reader understand why they should be excited about it. If that was the intention of this article, then the real points to make should've started after that line.

That would've been much more interesting.

[1] - No pun intended, of course

Re: Impending kOS

#37

Post by geocar »

dang wrote: post #31
geocar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree fundamentally. I have noticed every page I scroll causes a comprehensive loss of around 90%, so in reading something that is 10 pagefuls long, I might only be able to produce a tiny part of the program. Your milage may vary. I find not scrolling, and just moving my eyes, I rapidly absorb the program, and I find most bugs just by reading the code . This practice is absolutely impossible for me if I have to…

Yes, the research literature on software development has consistently found that code size is the best measurement of complexity and predictor of error rates. (Sorry I don't have citations handy but we've discussed this many times on HN, and there's a recent study in the book "Making Software" that adds to it.) What's interesting is how strongly this goes against what most people think they know about good programmin…

If someone produces smaller and faster code than me, then I should want to learn from it. I wonder why other people have the exact opposite reaction.

Why do you think that is?

Re: Impending kOS

#38

Post by 616c »

geocar wrote: post #19
616c wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a fun experiment. I studied linguistics in college, and I do not think anyone ever discussed textual density of different languages with the "same" content (the latter part would be its own terrifying chestnut; if you have not studied machine translation and semantic eval and good luck ever confirming such a statement). I studied Arabic a lot, and Chinese about a year. I cannot speak to Chinese with only one…

I disagree: Translations are rarely accused of being as good or as comprehensive as the original. The fact that you can tell a story in 300 pages in Arabic and 300 pages in English is irrelevant. Iverson received a turing award[1] for his work on this subject. [1]: http://www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf

Cool. Will definitely read more about this then.

Re: Impending kOS

#39

Post by lmm »

There's a contradiction I always see in these pieces: they talk a lot about the importance of using the right data structure. But these languages get their incredible conciseness by not giving you any choice about your data structures; their array type is hardcoded into the language, and if you want to use something else then your code balloons.
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