Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advanced programming languages (2009)

matt.might.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 208 posts

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#61

Post by premium-concern »

dsacco wrote: post #12

This post is very fortuitous for me. I've been looking to learn a functional language and I had more or less narrowed my options to Haskell, OCaml and Scala. I liked the breakdown between these languages and the resources. Can anyone who programs in Haskell or OCaml regularly tell me the current state of standard and third party library support? I'm very attracted to Scala because it has JVM support, which sounds fan…

I can recommend Scala:

- It is mature and rock-solid, but still manages to evolve, fix issues and simplify/remove features. Most other languages are purely additive, meaning you will have to carry on all the baggage since the languages' inception.

- It is a language which is interested in identifying the best way to solve common programming issues and spares you with all this ideological "OOP/FP is bad" bullshit.

- It has the largest ecosystem (plus it can use all of Java's, too).

- It has the best tooling.

- It has the largest community.

- It has some great learning resources, like the three (or four?) Coursera courses starting in a few weeks.

- Its JavaScript backend is stable and production-ready, Scala-Native is being worked on.

> That said, I come from a C++ and Python background, so do I need to know Java well before learning Scala?

Java knowledge might reduce the amount of learning (as many Java things like the JVM also apply to Scala), but isn't really necessary. You will be fine.

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#62

Post by zZorgz »

tonyjstark wrote: post #9

For a real world project pick a suitable language that will not only help you to implement whatever you have to implement but also to maintain the project. Also you should be able to find other programmers knowing that language if you need to. Maybe even use the language you already know even if it is not the newest and hottest stuff. But for private or side projects use whatever enlightens you. Those projects should…

I had a small server written in Haskell but since the other contributor familiar with Java/C/C++ was not able to pick at it effectively, we switched to Rust and we all were happy, and transitioning was fine.

At work I deal with Java code, but we have a framework we wanted to use that's written in Scala, and since Scala can interop with Java, we were all productively able to transition over for the better.

For a hobby project we use Objective-C, but we are starting to write some bits in Swift. Apple is especially effective at trying to convince the developers to change over to this shiny language.

I think "advanced" languages can be used in real world applications, and the transition experience from other well known languages can certainly matter.

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#64

Post by rayiner »

_ph_ wrote: post #49
Bromskloss wrote: post #42

> It's untyped, which makes it ideal for web-based programming and rapid prototyping. Given its Lisp heritage, Scheme is a natural fit for artificial intelligence. Why does being untyped and having a Lisp heritage make Scheme suitable for these three tasks?

And of course, it is not "untyped". It is dynamically typed.

PL theorists generally talk about whether or not syntactic terms (as opposed to runtime values) have types. Scheme is untyped by that definition.

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#65

Post by jghn »

dsacco wrote: post #12

This post is very fortuitous for me. I've been looking to learn a functional language and I had more or less narrowed my options to Haskell, OCaml and Scala. I liked the breakdown between these languages and the resources. Can anyone who programs in Haskell or OCaml regularly tell me the current state of standard and third party library support? I'm very attracted to Scala because it has JVM support, which sounds fan…

Some would argue that not knowing Java would be a benefit to learning scala. It depends though, some scala codebases are very java-y and others are very un-java-y

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#66

Post by throwawaysocks »

saosebastiao wrote: post #52
throwawaysocks wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing/deploying F# on a non-Windows machine is a huge pain. Been there, won't do that again.

It's not. I actively refuse to use Windows and have never had any trouble installing or using F#. I've only really used it in the last 1.5 years or so, so maybe what you claim was true in the past, but it is not true anymore. There are other reasons to not like it though. For me those would be a lack of HKT and functors, and its primitive compiler optimization due to relying heavily on a VM built for a very different…

This was > ~3 years ago, so maybe things have gotten better lately.

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#67

Post by phamilton »

justinhj wrote: post #60
phamilton wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scala's JVM support can get rough. Many a developer had gone down the road of finding a library like a db driver and using it in Scala. This works fine until you deadlock your production system because your execution context ran out of threads because your db driver blocks. So yes, while you can use Java libraries you often have to jump through a lot of hoops.

Scala makes it really easy to call a blocking function using a future with a configurable execution context. I don't see why one would run out of threads. Currently we use the Typesafe supported Slick library but the mechanism is the same. Maybe I'm missing your point but as a professional Scala programmer I've never run into a problem with Jvm or Java integration

I've done it naively with a mongo driver. Just wrapping it in a future doesn't cut it, as you said you have to configure a separate execution context and even that context is finite. Or use a blocking future which has other implications.

It's more a point against the "strictly better than Java, use the bits you want as you you go" point in the article. You have to understand Scala's execution model and make sure you are mixing the paradigms properly, because it's fully of leaky abstractions.

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#68

Post by jghn »

baby wrote: post #51

I can't seriously read an article that promotes Scheme over any other languages. We had a class in university and everybody hated it. How can you write complex program with so many parenthesis?

How can you write a complex program with so many semicolons? How can you write a complex program with so many braces?

Your statement sounds more like unfamiliarity of other major PL styles than anything else.

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#69

Post by jlg23 »

phamilton wrote: post #54
Bromskloss wrote: post #42

> It's untyped, which makes it ideal for web-based programming and rapid prototyping. Given its Lisp heritage, Scheme is a natural fit for artificial intelligence. Why does being untyped and having a Lisp heritage make Scheme suitable for these three tasks?

Web based is because JSON is always easier with dynamic types. Rapid prototyping is because it requires less explicit up front design due to dynamic types. Artificial Intelligence is because metaprogramming is easier in homoiconic languages.

Your first two points are also met by optionally typed languages.

Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)

#70

Post by jghn »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #25
dsacco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jane Street Capital's Yaron Minsky once said that contrary to popular belief hiring for OCaml developers was easier because the signal to noise ratio in the OCaml community is so much better than other, more approachable languages. He would send a job post to the OCaml mailing list, get 15 responses, interview 10 people, bring five onsite and ultimately hire three new people. I don't have direct experience with this,…

I've got managerial experience hiring (on both ends of the spectrum of talent) and engineering experience in computational finance at a prop firm similar to Jane Street. He has a fast-hire ability and high-signal to noise for sure but he works at a prop firm . His hiring practices are a market anomaly simply because he can pay effectively whatever a competent developer wants. Jane Street can basically throw money at…

OT but how useful would the boston haskell meetups be as an extreme noob? Will the talks be so far over my head that I should learn me a haskell a bit prior to attending or would it make for a good way to start absorbing some knowledge?
Post reply on HN