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Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

pike.lysator.liu.se

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Re: Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

#51

Post by cmrdporcupine »

speed_spread wrote: post #34
pansa2 wrote: post #29

Pike is described as a "dynamic" language, so I was expecting purely dynamic typing, yet the language uses Java/C-style variable declarations with explicit types. It seems that these are (unsound) type hints , years before TypeScript made them cool: > "If your program tries to put one type of value in a variable which was designed to hold another type of value, Pike may detect this" [emphasis mine] https://pike.lysat…

Groovy has that too and it's quite the anti-feature. Pretend static typing is worse than useless, it's the MAC-10 of footguns.

Sounds like Julia, too.

Also you'd think having the type signature would help with performance, but in some cases it can cause the VM to enforce a runtime type check where it wouldn't have before, imposing worse performance.

Re: Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

#52

Post by cess11 »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #45
ConanRus wrote: post #40

the question i always ask: WHY anther language.

.

In 1994 there was very little competition in scripting and LPC/Pike/moo and the like cribbed ideas that are still not mainstream or became mainstream much later. It's the same year Python got to 1.0 and they didn't get real traction until 2005-2010 sometime.

At the time the alternatives were stuff like Tcl and Awk and Perl 5, which were relatively clunky, incompetent or slower. Perl won for web, though Pike had Roxen and could have, and if that had happened we would likely have gotten a more Smalltalk-like Internet than the PHP Internet we got.

Pike is fun, it will likely compile just fine on your odd computers if you have any and it has some characteristics that are uncommon like easy hot upgrades for long lived systems and modules as data.

Re: Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

#53

Post by chuckadams »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #41
chuckadams wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LambdaMOO was ahead of its time in many ways: lists are immutable, but there was a handy splice operator. Verbs could have aliases and wildcards or both, allowing for some interesting namespace-like behavior. Would have been nice if they could have completely decoupled the built in parser before development died off, but it should be a pretty simple task nowadays, and some places like E_MOO managed to soft-code some…

LambdaMOO versions from sometime in the mid-90s and up (and offshoots like ToastStunt and also my rewrite, mooR) let you override the builtin parser with $do_command. And the builtin one I wrote in mooR is built to be pluggable (Rust trait) so should be possible to swap it out.

Ah yes I forgot about $do_command, that’s what we used. For some reason I remember doing it with raw network read commands but that was a different MOO project now that I think about it. Nice to know some people are still doing MUD server dev, it’s a scene I haven’t been back to in a while.

Re: Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

#54

Post by cmrdporcupine »

fifilura wrote: post #44
ConanRus wrote: post #40

the question i always ask: WHY anther language.

What were you doing in 1994? These guys were deep in the MUD.

I think it's important to point out that MUDs were probably the first complicated interactive synchronous "Internet applications", even though they were (primarily) textually driven and not "serious" (they were to us). So things like Pike (née-LPC) & moo were on the forefront here on how to author those kind of dynamic systems.

Early web sites, gopher, etc were just request/response mostly static content (sometimes with a dash of a database). They weren't synchronous or "live" in any real way. Things like IRC were synchronous but did not do programmable/dynamic content.

I cut my teeth on moo, and was bored & annoyed to tears writing cgi scripts in Python & Perl and the web didn't catch up to produce really interactive stuff until well over 10 years later ("web 2.0")

Re: Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

#55

Post by cmrdporcupine »

chuckadams wrote: post #53
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LambdaMOO versions from sometime in the mid-90s and up (and offshoots like ToastStunt and also my rewrite, mooR) let you override the builtin parser with $do_command. And the builtin one I wrote in mooR is built to be pluggable (Rust trait) so should be possible to swap it out.

Ah yes I forgot about $do_command, that’s what we used. For some reason I remember doing it with raw network read commands but that was a different MOO project now that I think about it. Nice to know some people are still doing MUD server dev, it’s a scene I haven’t been back to in a while.

Your name may be familiar.

Re: Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

#56

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #47
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.

You realize that you're on a site that is mainly for programmers , right? Programmers are often interested in languages, for the same reason that woodworkers are often interested in wood - even a kind of wood that they may never use.

[deleted]

Re: Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

#58

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #47
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.

You realize that you're on a site that is mainly for programmers , right? Programmers are often interested in languages, for the same reason that woodworkers are often interested in wood - even a kind of wood that they may never use.

[deleted]

Re: Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

#59

Post by minda »

runjake wrote: post #50

Lots of people questioning what Pike brings to the table. Be aware that Pike has been around for over 31 years [1]. It's kind of dead now and a lot of people have moved over to Lua[2] (which is over 32 years old!). So long ago, that it took me a minute to recall having programmed a lot of CGI code with it, back in the Roxen web server[3] days. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_(programming_language)#Hi... 2. http…

Why is it likely currently receiving traction on HN? Is there an effort to revive it amongst developers, or has something changed that would make it more relevant now?

Re: Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and C

#60

Post by em-bee »

runjake wrote: post #50

Lots of people questioning what Pike brings to the table. Be aware that Pike has been around for over 31 years [1]. It's kind of dead now and a lot of people have moved over to Lua[2] (which is over 32 years old!). So long ago, that it took me a minute to recall having programmed a lot of CGI code with it, back in the Roxen web server[3] days. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_(programming_language)#Hi... 2. http…

pike and lua are nothing alike. it is more somewhere between python and java (kind of like a typed python). it may be comparable to go in some respects.

pike is suitable for large high performance standalone applications. basically everything that you would use python for as well but faster.

pike is also still under active development and maintenance, so far from dead.

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