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We moved from Pony to Rust

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Re: We moved from Pony to Rust

#81

Post by smallstepforman »

I evaluated Pony 4 years ago, and walked away due to 2 technical issues:

- garbage collection - no mechanism for synchronous access to actors

We ended up building a C++ actor model, with it's associated headaches. Yes, we still have race conditions and some developers invoke the function directly instead of using messages, and yes, sometimes we will grab a locking mechanism to do synchronous access, but at the end of the day, the performance of real code (embedded gaming system) is all that matters, and we did meet our performance goals.

Having said that, I've given up looking for an actor programming language and started building my own. Essentially, C++ like with Actors and compiler validated tracking of resources across actors (so the compiler knows about locks and actors). Still working on the compiler (compiles to C++20) and maybe 18 months away from public reveal. But the initial batch of test apps look very nice (but without compiler validation of resource sharing at this point in time). Very terse code, and implementing a compiler that outputs C++ was much easier than I originally feared. And no, there are no forward declarations or header files, compilers are run on modern workstations that have the grunt to produce the necessary scaffolding (from the project dependency script).

Re: We moved from Pony to Rust

#82

Post by hardwaregeek »

wyager wrote: post #67
hardwaregeek wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Jane Street is a big exception. It's like when PG espouses lisp. Back in the 90's[1] language ecosystems were very sparse. An ecosystem was a few big libraries and a syntax highlighter. Now stuff like IDEs, linting, packages, etc. have made people's standards quite high for ecosystems. On the flip side, back in the day languages like OCaml and Lisp had stuff other languages could only dream about. Functions a…

A couple points: These days, you don’t need to build an IDE from scratch - you can just build some language server support for your language and plug into existing IDEs. It’s much less work! Also, as an aside that’s not really germane to the argument, it’s possible (and IMO preferable) to write code without using an IDE. It forces you to write code that’s broken up into contexts small enough to fit in human working m…

Language servers are certainly a big improvement. However there's a different between "there exists" and "this is a community priority". In some language communities the developers use IDEs, they like IDEs and they make IDEs a priority. In other communities there's one or two people who like them, kinda, and maintain a plugin. Let's put it this way, I don't see OCaml moving to a query based compiler anytime soon.

I'm not sure I agree with the no-IDE part. It feels very "Plato complaining about the invention of writing". Human working memory is quite narrow and quite fickle. If you step away from a codebase for a while, or you're learning it for the first time, an IDE can really help with your bearings. I agree that code should be broken up into contexts and well organized, but I don't think the editor should be the forcing function here.

And IDEs are great! Goto definition that works even in complicated situations unlike ctags; inline type inference; generating imports. I don't begrudge someone using emacs or vim (2nd generation emacs user) but I gotta say, IDEs work wonders.

As for who I'd recruit, I think it's a false dichotomy to say that the alternative is "people who copy/paste from stack overflow and get lost without autocomplete". There's plenty of great, legit developers who can write you a custom serialization library in nano, but choose to use IntelliJ and packages because it gets the job done.

I don't mean to denigrate the OCaml, Haskell or Lisp communities. I wish more people wrote them! But I also recognize that these languages went from secret weapons to, well, a valid option in a trade off matrix. I'd still love to work at Jane Street, although between this comment and my application record, that may be a pipe dream.

Re: We moved from Pony to Rust

#83

Post by wyager »

chillfox wrote: post #73
wyager wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at an OCaml company and it wasn't nearly as much of an issue as one might predict. You can (it turns out) build a very successful business even if there aren't a lot of existing libraries, or if the language lacks certain basic features like native multithreading (same with Python of course). I don't have a great model for why this isn't devastatingly expensive, but it's probably some combination of *…

Multi-threading can often be handed off to the OS in the form of just run more processes. So in most cases there is really no need for the language to handle it.

There isn't really a need for anything, which is kind of the point. You can use a random language that's missing a ton of functionality and you can probably make it work.

Re: We moved from Pony to Rust

#84

Post by sullyj3 »

crdrost wrote: post #33
Zababa wrote: post #16

This feels like the same pattern as Dark leaving OCaml for F#: https://blog.darklang.com/leaving-ocaml// . Ecosystem matters a lot these days. Outside of these two specific cases, I wonder if we're, as an industry, too afraid of writing this kind of stuff now I feel like it was done a lot before, and not at all these days. Sure, NIH syndrome is a fallacy, but having to write one library may not be so bad. I would be…

Kind of, but like OCaml-to-F# is like "Dark goes from the Prius of languages nobody uses, to the Tesla of the .NET ecosystem." The aims (ecological in the car case) of the purchaser are similar, but the car [at least in its ecosystem] is sleeker and now the roads are a bit different. On the other hand this is like "Wallaroo moves from the Cadillac of languages nobody uses, to the Chevy Equinox of languages nobody use…

Rust is a language nobody uses?

Re: We moved from Pony to Rust

#85

Post by shpongled »

Zababa wrote: post #39
openfuture wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should have used a horse, they are much more reliable than camels and more mature than ponies.

I'm not sure, AoE2 taught me that camels always win against horses. And if you consider Rust to be OCaml's child (which is kind of true if you really stretch things), it seems like young camels win against young horses too.

I don't think it's a big stretch - I always consider Rust to be in the ML family of languages

Re: We moved from Pony to Rust

#87

Post by devit »

smallstepforman wrote: post #81

I evaluated Pony 4 years ago, and walked away due to 2 technical issues: - garbage collection - no mechanism for synchronous access to actors We ended up building a C++ actor model, with it's associated headaches. Yes, we still have race conditions and some developers invoke the function directly instead of using messages, and yes, sometimes we will grab a locking mechanism to do synchronous access, but at the end of…

Why not use Rust? It can do what you want.

Re: We moved from Pony to Rust

#88

Post by Karrot_Kream »

devit wrote: post #87
smallstepforman wrote: post #81

I evaluated Pony 4 years ago, and walked away due to 2 technical issues: - garbage collection - no mechanism for synchronous access to actors We ended up building a C++ actor model, with it's associated headaches. Yes, we still have race conditions and some developers invoke the function directly instead of using messages, and yes, sometimes we will grab a locking mechanism to do synchronous access, but at the end of…

Why not use Rust? It can do what you want.

+1 actix.rs is pretty well-known and gives you the benefit of a full programming language if you need to do other things. Rust should be really easy to onboard to if your devs already know C++ and while the compiler is a lot slower, there's enough posts online about Actix that you shouldn't have issues searching around.

Re: We moved from Pony to Rust

#89

Post by spooneybarger »

runevault wrote: post #65
pjmlp wrote: post #2

I guess it makes sense from business point of view, although it is a pity that Pony is losing what is probably the only commercial user (that I am aware of).

I remember becoming curious about Pony because of how much they talked it up, though I never got around to trying it. Feels weird to see the pivot, though I've felt for a while Rust or Rust-inspired languages will become a larger and larger part of the future of software so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Hey, there's still plenty of time to try Pony.

We are a little volunteer driven project and will be here whenever you find the time. Stop by the Zulip sometime and chat!

https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/

-Sean-

Re: We moved from Pony to Rust

#90

Post by notriddle »

sullyj3 wrote: post #84
crdrost wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of, but like OCaml-to-F# is like "Dark goes from the Prius of languages nobody uses, to the Tesla of the .NET ecosystem." The aims (ecological in the car case) of the purchaser are similar, but the car [at least in its ecosystem] is sleeker and now the roads are a bit different. On the other hand this is like "Wallaroo moves from the Cadillac of languages nobody uses, to the Chevy Equinox of languages nobody use…

Rust is a language nobody uses?

“Nobody” is relative. Rust doesn’t have a lot of users, but it isn’t Pony.
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