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Red Lang goes blockchain

red-lang.org

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Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#41

Post by nickpsecurity »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #9

God! Enough! At this point any announcement with "blockchain" should turn any informed person off of the whole project. Checking out Red was on my roadmap and now it's firmly not.

The benefits section of Red is a pretty amazing list most languages can't say:

http://www.red-lang.org/p/about.html

Its Red/System DSL [1] is also something that could be easily used or improved by folks like you that build OS's on calculators and such. More talent can only help. ;) I've been eyeballing it for a concept of high-level systems programming that extracts to multiple targets to leverage their static/dynamic analysis, testing, and compilers. Keep feeding any improvements detected by each into original code until result is pretty solid. Additionally, a language with features close to C that's easy to macro can by itself be advantageous as a C replacement. Double true if the initial interpreter for that language is easy to implement in C or assembly.

So, try it out. Just ignore the blockchain BS if you don't like that. Worst case in event you really like Red, but not what's on the submission, is that you fork or partly clone the prior work to leverage its benefits minus the bullshit. :)

Note: This is true for any great language or other tooling that's malleable. Easier to escape lock-in to specific paths the maintainers take. Not necessarily easy but easier.

[1] http://static.red-lang.org/red-system-specs.html

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#42

Post by otoburb »

wyager wrote: post #40
phantom_oracle wrote: post #32

edit I know we're all experiencing blockchain fatigue, but for once, I actually know what the tokens will be used for (beyond the usual snake-oil that other ICOs sell). For reference: Some of the target usages for the token holders, will include: - voting rights: influence the Red roadmap, vote for features and issue tickets. - tipping: useful chat posts, code contributions, learning materials providers, etc. - intra…

Literally everything except “voting rights” is better served by a more popular existing cryptocurrency, and program language design doesn’t need a fancy voting system.

ICOs increase the emotional connection to a project by catering to the "in-group" tribal mentality no matter the original intent (i.e. greed). It can be debated how (or whether) this is fallacious, but the empirical evidence thus far indicates this model generally raising funds more quickly and in larger quantities than mere donations.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#43

Post by jabgrabdthrow »

phantom_oracle wrote: post #32

edit I know we're all experiencing blockchain fatigue, but for once, I actually know what the tokens will be used for (beyond the usual snake-oil that other ICOs sell). For reference: Some of the target usages for the token holders, will include: - voting rights: influence the Red roadmap, vote for features and issue tickets. - tipping: useful chat posts, code contributions, learning materials providers, etc. - intra…

Rent-seeking and design by committee. Imagine they charged dollars instead of their own coin (it would be cheaper to do so).

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#44

Post by MuffinFlavored »

MR4D wrote: post #28
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #9

God! Enough! At this point any announcement with "blockchain" should turn any informed person off of the whole project. Checking out Red was on my roadmap and now it's firmly not.

I’m with you about blockchain announcements, but this looks like it’s actually appropriate. From the linked page: “Such dialect will compile to the Ethereum VM (EVM) bytecode directly as first target, and more backends will be added later to support other chains, like NEO. ” That seems significant to me.

Sounds like an opportunity for a startup.

JSON input in one format, let the SaaS translate it to ETH, NEO, etc.

Thoughts/

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

9214 wrote: post #18
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #9

God! Enough! At this point any announcement with "blockchain" should turn any informed person off of the whole project. Checking out Red was on my roadmap and now it's firmly not.

Don't be so narrow-minded. Buzzwords and cryptocurrencies speculations aside, Red is really worth checking, at least if you're a language enthusiast and is interested in Forth and Lisp family. And here blockchain is nothing more than an innovative (yet rather controversial, I agree, since I'm skeptical too) model to sustain programming language community and gain a solid ground for core developing team.

Red has potential, but certainly has had slow progress; shifting focus to blockchain may increase total resources but even if it does it mostly likely means slowing down progress outside of the new focal domain.

So, I can see it legitimately killing interest at the margins for those not specifically not interested in blockchain-focussed programming.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#46

Post by vram22 »

tadasv wrote: post #33

Not sure what to think of this. Smells like FOMO. I looked at their roadmap and they're planning to support so many different architectures. Adding EVM support seems like adding more complexity to the project just because blockchain. I think something like this is needed for programming on blockchain, but I'd prefer to see a dedicated project instead.

>I looked at their roadmap and they're planning to support so many different architectures.

Yes, I noticed and was concerned about that too - that they may be taking on too much work. Otherwise I like their goals (apart from this latest news).

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#47

Post by 9214 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #45
9214 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so narrow-minded. Buzzwords and cryptocurrencies speculations aside, Red is really worth checking, at least if you're a language enthusiast and is interested in Forth and Lisp family. And here blockchain is nothing more than an innovative (yet rather controversial, I agree, since I'm skeptical too) model to sustain programming language community and gain a solid ground for core developing team.

Red has potential, but certainly has had slow progress; shifting focus to blockchain may increase total resources but even if it does it mostly likely means slowing down progress outside of the new focal domain. So, I can see it legitimately killing interest at the margins for those not specifically not interested in blockchain-focussed programming.

This is a valid concern.

As I understood from my discussion with Nenad (lead developer), making such move was a hard decision to make. On the one hand, it MAY actually pay-off in a long term for whole language ecosystem overall, but on the other hand, for that we need to pay the price of slower development and releases delays.

To answer another point (if I understand it correctly) - you don't really need to be interested in blockchains and stuff (personally I don't) to participate in community and programming with Red, there's lots of other things to play with (metaprogramming, language-oriented programming, reactive programming, data-driven programming, parsing, DSL and eDSLs, baking cross-platform GUIs, system programming with Red/System).

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#48

Post by zzzcpan »

Not sure why people are so skeptical. I'm hoping for ICO to become a successful model for open source projects. Maybe more projects will be able to sustain themselves with ICOs, Patreon, donations.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#50

Post by ZenoArrow »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #9

God! Enough! At this point any announcement with "blockchain" should turn any informed person off of the whole project. Checking out Red was on my roadmap and now it's firmly not.

> "Checking out Red was on my roadmap and now it's firmly not."

What I'd suggest is that this DSL for blockchain contracts is not really part of the core Red language. It's worth being aware that Red does not have a module system yet, but there are plans for one before version 1.0. I'd fully expect work like this contract DSL to be spun off into a module once the module functionality is in place.

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