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Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

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Re: Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

#41

Post by throwaway7645 »

jnordwick wrote: post #38
buzzybee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Red[0] is closest along to practically realizing this concept by focusing on compositions of small languages, a premise Alan Kay also worked on with the STEPS project at VPRI[1]. The main thing that stops people from beelining down this path is the sheer quantity of yak-shaving involved. We're all impatient and have near-term goals, and glue-and-iterate gets us there without having to engage in a non-linear…

Trying to find a short REAL Red example (not Hello World or here's how to show an alert), and I can't seem to find one. Can you help me out? Something that would help me understand what the language is like.

The concept of Red is heavily based off of Carl Sassenrath's Rebol, only Red is both very high level and fully capable of low level programming as well. Rebol can show you the high level things possible with Red. It truly is amazing. Even though its kind of old now, I installed Rebol recently and was blown away by how much power I got with no installation. Red will be much the same and allow you to make miniscule native binaries.

Re: Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

#42

Post by chriswarbo »

perfmode wrote: post #7

Is it theoretically impossible to fit an interpreter for a dynamic programming language in the L1 cache of a modern chip? (I understand there are physical constraints that prohibit super low-latency memory lookups (of unconstrained size) in 0+epsilon time (where epsilon is small))

> Is it theoretically impossible to fit an interpreter for a dynamic programming language in the L1 cache of a modern chip?

The APL, J and K languages are known for being very fast; I vaguely remember one reason being given that their programs are so terse and high-level, they're compact enough to fit in cache. Not sure if the interpreter would though.

Re: Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

#43

Post by stcredzero »

goatlover wrote: post #37
stcredzero wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could marry up the advantages of text/files Is that really such an advantage? What kind of advantage does having source code scattered in files have over Smalltalk's Change Log? The Change Log greatly simplifies having live code, and having a runtime environment where you could crash the system with a runtime change. Source code in text files complicates this. It's also a powerful development tool all by itsel…

I mean in being able to generate source code as text files at any point, or update from text files, since that's what programmers are used to, and there are so much of the tooling is built around that. You're not going to be putting an image on github.

I mean in being able to generate source code as text files at any point, or update from text files

It has been done many times. There was a Camp Smalltalk initiative to standardize such a mechanism back in the early 2000's. Anyone could code something up that does this for a particular dialect in a matter of minutes.

Re: Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

#44

Post by Terr_ »

gutnor wrote: post #32
kmicklas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their general more precise use of language This isn't really true, it's just a snobby idea the French have somehow successfully convinced us of. (It goes along with the idea that they have the most "refined" culture or something).

A lot of the specific term in English comes from the common French vocabulary and are still very (very) close to the common words in the French spoken today. The common vocabulary in English comes from German origin. Actually I think you can basically speak about anything using only German origin words. In order to learn French and its vocabulary, English speaker will found a lot of similarity but from the more forma…

There's also "Anglish", where non-germanic influences are replaced. A funny sample of this is Uncleftish Beholding [0], a fictional textbook entry by sci-fi writer Poul Anderson.

[0] https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language...

Re: Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

#45

Post by chriswarbo »

eternalban wrote: post #15
chadcmulligan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same thought, if he had a solution then he should have it by now.

His critical error is evident in his comparative analysis that places Physics and Programming on the same level. The systems that underly natural sciences are givens . The entire kettle of soup of software complexity boils on the fact that software engineering must first create the 'terra firma' of computing. That is the root cause of the complexity in software: it lacks a physics.

I think it's the other way around:

In physics, we don't know what the fundamental rules are, we can only see complicated outcomes and have to infer (guess) what the rules might be.

In computing, we know what the fundamental rules are (universal computation; whether that's turing machines, lambda calculus, sk logic, etc. they're all equivalent in power), but we have to deduce what the complicated outcomes are.

Re: Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

#47

Post by agumonkey »

chriswarbo wrote: post #42
perfmode wrote: post #7

Is it theoretically impossible to fit an interpreter for a dynamic programming language in the L1 cache of a modern chip? (I understand there are physical constraints that prohibit super low-latency memory lookups (of unconstrained size) in 0+epsilon time (where epsilon is small))

> Is it theoretically impossible to fit an interpreter for a dynamic programming language in the L1 cache of a modern chip? The APL, J and K languages are known for being very fast; I vaguely remember one reason being given that their programs are so terse and high-level, they're compact enough to fit in cache. Not sure if the interpreter would though.

Also, apl j k have low interpretation cost, so you're pushing the metal close to its limits.

Re: Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

#48

Post by agumonkey »

kmicklas wrote: post #19
lsd5you wrote: post #11

This is a distinction I first learned about working in france years ago. Without any real basis I wondered whether it is their general more precise use of language which made it a more obvious distinction for a french person to make. At the time they were more or less synonyms for me, but since then have become very distinct especially when talking about software!

> their general more precise use of language This isn't really true, it's just a snobby idea the French have somehow successfully convinced us of. (It goes along with the idea that they have the most "refined" culture or something).

I beg to differ, as a young adult I became enamored with English, for its simplicity in structure and vocabulary, I was annoyed by French redundancy and diversity and almost started to think in English.

Few years later, English feels restrictive and too simple. French aggregated many influences from centuries at a crossroad, and it seems it kept a lot in order to be able to add subtle layers of information by using particular sets of words fitting together well to propel metaphores and other succint yet precise description of the world.

Now I say that, on average, about mainstream incarnations of both En and Fr, surely you can find poetic and tailor made English wording, in France it seemed part of the culture, but recently it's been on the way out, only elders speak a bit that way.

Re: Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

#49

Post by jk4930 »

jnordwick wrote: post #38
buzzybee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Red[0] is closest along to practically realizing this concept by focusing on compositions of small languages, a premise Alan Kay also worked on with the STEPS project at VPRI[1]. The main thing that stops people from beelining down this path is the sheer quantity of yak-shaving involved. We're all impatient and have near-term goals, and glue-and-iterate gets us there without having to engage in a non-linear…

Trying to find a short REAL Red example (not Hello World or here's how to show an alert), and I can't seem to find one. Can you help me out? Something that would help me understand what the language is like.

Look at Rebol 2 docs. Or try this (enough for me to get started): http://redprogramming.com/Getting%20Started.html

Re: Is it really “Complex”? Or did we make it “Complicated”? (2014) [video]

#50

Post by bajsejohannes »

perfmode wrote: post #7

Is it theoretically impossible to fit an interpreter for a dynamic programming language in the L1 cache of a modern chip? (I understand there are physical constraints that prohibit super low-latency memory lookups (of unconstrained size) in 0+epsilon time (where epsilon is small))

There was a period where Opera had the fastest javascript engine of all the browser. It was a stack based runtime like all others at the time and, as a side-effect of being developed for mobile devices, was small enough to fit on a cache line. That was the key to the performance advantage. Then came V8 and everyone changed over to JITing compilers.
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