Eve Version 0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Eve Version 0

#61

Post by MrDosu » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

cmontella wrote: post #52

MrDosu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that an API is easier to learn by several factors regardless of how complex it is compared to the abstract reasoning and modelling skills to actually transform the faced problems into a precise model.

I respectfully disagree. People who are not programmers use abstract reasoning and modelling skills all the time in their daily lives. They more than have the skills to solve this problem: You have a list of friends and where they are, you have your own location. Find the list of friends that are near your location, and send an alert (text, e-mail, whatever). How hard is that? There is absolutely no inherent complexi…

This is just not true.

You cannot just give a smart person with common sense some pages of API docu and suddenly they are software architects. This takes years of experience to do. What you can do is be a code monkey and solve a very specific small problem space that an architect has assigned to you.

Re: Eve Version 0

#62

Post by biot » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

jamii wrote: post #50

The change of focus is perhaps hard to understand without more context. Basically, there are two really different modes of programming: Most of what we see on HN is about building applications, servers, websites etc. Big, monolithic things that take weeks to years and are deployed to somewhere else and used by lots of people. Most programming tools are built for this kind of work, where the time between writing the c…

Was there a problem inherent to building large applications that you found intractible, or is the shift solely due to focusing on entry-level accessibility?

Re: Eve Version 0

#63

Post by 27182818284 » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

Light Table is dead or alive at this point? I hear so little about it I can't help but feel it is on death's door or dead. I'm sad about that. It seemed like it could have been something really cool.

Re: Eve Version 0

#64

Post by ibdknox » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:36 PM UTC

mkozlows wrote: post #44

dgreensp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the opposite message, which is that programming tools and the process of programming are so bad, it's hard to get a computer to do a simple task for you without tearing your hair out, never mind building a UI. A better IDE (basically a better text editor) doesn't even scratch the surface.

The thing is, it's easy to say something is hard. Programming is definitely hard! The question is: Is it hard essentially, or is it hard accidentally? That is, can you remove unnecessary complexity from programming and suddenly it'll become easy? That was the proposition behind first LightTable, and then Eve as originally conceived. But neither of them really found a satisfying answer, a way to say "hey, for making y…

> But neither of them really found a satisfying answer, a way to say "hey, for making your web app or whatever, if you throw away your existing stuff and use this tool/process, now it's super-easy."

Actually, we think we did. We're just not choosing that as the primary focus of the workflow in Eve. Now with a better version of the editor and with a bit more work on the UI builder, I suspect we could rebuild the entire foursquare clone in under a week. If we had VCS so that multiple people could work together on it, it might only be a couple of days. This foundation for programming has lots of implications for building "real software" - it's actually based on research for making distributed systems much easier to build. [1]

We'll see more of that as we go since we're bootstrapping bits and pieces. One of the first things that will transition over is the compiler, if that gives you any indication of the level of sophistication you can achieve with this programming model.

[1]: http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/eurosys10-boom.pdf

Re: Eve Version 0

#65

Post by 27182818284 » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:36 PM UTC

dcre wrote: post #4

aerovistae wrote: post #3

Bugs me when people choose a name that's already being used for something much better known.

You mean the game? Not sure there's much potential for confusion.

I don't even play the game, and I was immediately confused by the HN headline. I thought it was going to be a blog post about the history of the game and its first version.

Re: Eve Version 0

#66

Post by dang » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #40

mej10 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stack choice is especially interesting since I thought they were big fans of Clojure. I would like to hear their rationale for Rust/TypeScript over Clojure/ClojureScript (or Clojure/Javascript). EDIT: typo

Why is jamii's reply to this dead? It is very informative and on-topic.

It accidentally triggered a spam filter. Sorry; we fixed it.

Re: Eve Version 0

#67

Post by dorgo » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:40 PM UTC

cmontella wrote: post #52

MrDosu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that an API is easier to learn by several factors regardless of how complex it is compared to the abstract reasoning and modelling skills to actually transform the faced problems into a precise model.

I respectfully disagree. People who are not programmers use abstract reasoning and modelling skills all the time in their daily lives. They more than have the skills to solve this problem: You have a list of friends and where they are, you have your own location. Find the list of friends that are near your location, and send an alert (text, e-mail, whatever). How hard is that? There is absolutely no inherent complexi…

Maybe some non-programmers manage to solve the problem itself. But only a tiny part of them will be able to write down what they actually did (step by step) in a precise way suiteable to tranlate it into a computer program.

Re: Eve Version 0

#68

Post by _pmf_ » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

> what it seems like we need is something more akin to the original vision of Lotus Notes - an environment full of information where communicating that information to people or even other systems is a fundamental primitive.

Oh boy, here we go again. A more direct admission of not knowing what to build is hardly imaginable.

Re: Eve Version 0

#69

Post by divs1210 » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

27182818284 wrote: post #63

Light Table is dead or alive at this point? I hear so little about it I can't help but feel it is on death's door or dead. I'm sad about that. It seemed like it could have been something really cool.

Not sure what you're talking about. I use it almost every day for clojure/js and sometimes python when I just want a quick script. (PyCharm for actual dev).

Re: Eve Version 0

#70

Post by 27182818284 » Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

divs1210 wrote: post #69

27182818284 wrote: post #63

Light Table is dead or alive at this point? I hear so little about it I can't help but feel it is on death's door or dead. I'm sad about that. It seemed like it could have been something really cool.

Not sure what you're talking about. I use it almost every day for clojure/js and sometimes python when I just want a quick script. (PyCharm for actual dev).

I have it installed on my machine too. I just hear nothing about its future and it seems like folks are focused elsewhere too. E.g., this topic about Eve. Especially for something YC backed. I guess I was just expecting to hear more and such.