Advanced programming languages • Hacker News Board

Re: Advanced programming languages

#71

Post by lelele » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 3:47 AM UTC

bitops wrote: post #31

lelele wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know how far over to the functional paradigm arc leans but hacker news is programed in it. HN doesn't look as an outstanding piece of software.

Can you qualify that statement a bit? There's more to HN than meets the eye.

The dreaded "Unknown or expired link" error if you flip through a few pages. Thanks heaven there is hckrnews.com.

Merging discussions is not allowed.

No checking of duplicate links, if I'm not mistaken.

Non foldable threads.

No way to watch threads of comments.

No notifications when someone answers a comment of yours.

After you have submitted a comment, it just reloads the page instead of taking you right were your fresh comment is, to allow you to continue reading where you left.

Item lists in comments are not handled.

How do you format text in comments? Nobody tells you.

Basically, if you take HN at face value, it does not look like a smart piece of software. Maybe under the hood there is a mind-bending piece of AI, but as long as it doesn't care about users, users will never know about it.

Re: Advanced programming languages

#72

Post by zukhan » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 7:05 AM UTC

SomeOtherGuy wrote: post #61

jasim wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However finding that first 'good' programmer is going to be harder for languages like Scala, Haskell etc. compared to finding the first good programmer on more popular languages

No it isn't, that's the point. It is easier to find any programmer. It is not easier to find a good programmer. 99% of java programmers are bad. 50% of scala programmers are bad. Finding the 1% of good java programmers is just as hard as finding the 50% of good scala programmers.

"99% of java programmers are bad."

Are you part of the 99%? It irks me when people make pompous statements like this.

Re: Advanced programming languages

#73

Post by weaksauce » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 5:41 PM UTC

lelele wrote: post #71

bitops wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you qualify that statement a bit? There's more to HN than meets the eye.

The dreaded "Unknown or expired link" error if you flip through a few pages. Thanks heaven there is hckrnews.com. Merging discussions is not allowed. No checking of duplicate links, if I'm not mistaken. Non foldable threads. No way to watch threads of comments. No notifications when someone answers a comment of yours. After you have submitted a comment, it just reloads the page instead of taking you right were your f…

The thing was written to give a linear history(if I'm not mistaken) so that when you click next page it's what the next page would have given you at the time you first loaded the page. He could just do a page=4 query string and not use continuations and make the pages the same for everyone with the risk of seeing duplicates.

It will vote for the original if the urls are the same when you submit it. This is a simple check though.

Foldable threads are client side.

I wish it had notifications.

The other items re formatting could be easily fixed on the submission page.

Re: Advanced programming languages

#74

Post by gtani » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 6:25 AM UTC

dagw wrote: post #58

lelele wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Galois is a company which uses functional languages, mainly Haskell if I'm not mistaken: http://corp.galois.com/ If I'm not mistaken, Jane Street is another functional programming shop: http://www.janestreet.com/ These are companies using OCaml: http://mirror.ocamlcore.org/wiki.cocan.org/companies.html

I also know of at least a couple of large investment banks that have significant Haskell projects in house for doing things like options modelling.

The other day i ran a blog about haskell at Standard Chartered (written in, um, Hungarian?) thru google translate. Very entertaining! But SC is probably becoming a substantial codebase

Re: Advanced programming languages

#75

Post by SomeOtherGuy » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 6:08 PM UTC

zukhan wrote: post #72

SomeOtherGuy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't, that's the point. It is easier to find any programmer. It is not easier to find a good programmer. 99% of java programmers are bad. 50% of scala programmers are bad. Finding the 1% of good java programmers is just as hard as finding the 50% of good scala programmers.

"99% of java programmers are bad." Are you part of the 99%? It irks me when people make pompous statements like this.

I'm not a java programmer. Just to help you out for the future since you seem a bit confused:

    pomp·ous/ˈpämpəs/Adjective:
        Affectedly and irritatingly grand, solemn, or self-important: "a pompous ass".

Re: Advanced programming languages

#76

Post by sbirch » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 10:47 PM UTC

lelele wrote: post #3

sbirch wrote: post #2

"In academic research and in entrepreneurship, you need to multiply your effectiveness as a programmer, and since you (probably) won't be working with an entrenched code base, you are free to use whatever language best suits the task at hand." What about libraries and code-bases available to the programmer? Legacy code might not be a concern, but what about having to reinvent wheels?

Any advanced language worth his salt will allow you to link libraries from other languages. It may require some work, but at least it can be done; whilst you can't expand the capabilities of your programming language of choice as easily. I think no language is advanced enough to be used alone for everything. Steve Yeggie said that once a time at Amazon the only languages allowed were Lisp and C. It makes sense: an hi…

This is true, but there's a lot to be said for native libraries which can be used more naturally. More important for things like frameworks, etc. than algorithms / highly technical code. e.g. using the Python wrapper for OpenCV is fine -- a little bit jenky but it works, and I definitely don't want to write those myself if I'm focusing on a product. On the other hand, would you want to use a wrapper for a web framework written in C? Probably not.