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Ballerina, a language with structural type system

v1-0.ballerina.io

91–100 of 126 posts

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#91
post #63
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t even need to read past the product name. Like a lot of geeks they just don’t have a clue how to sell, nor how to hire talent that can. There is no part of their branding that is not a straight disaster. (And that shoulder massage…oy.) Look, real ballerinas are totally hardcore badass atheletes who could easily kick all our flabby nerd asses while standing on one toe, and I take my hat off to them for what t…

You see a shoulder massage, I see someone giving support to and obviously nervous programmer :) Granted though I can't see where the name is coming from.

Yeah, just seems like maternal guidance to me.

People nitpicking the gender of the programmer in a cartoon here is a great example of what I despise about modern tech discourse. The gender of the cartoon programmer isn't even that clear, it's so highly stylized. But I wonder if it was a woman giving another woman a massage instead, they'd be lambasted for pandering to the male fantasy of lesbianism.

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#92
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: Huge personal hunch, might be down-voted to hell for writing this... I think that languages like this don't go mainstream because people like/want to write code , and anything that does not help to actually write code is seen as an hindrance. The main feedback I've heard about this kind of tool is "it's clunky, it's a pain to write code with". Guess what ? It's a good thing IMO. For this to go mainstream,…

Ballerina does NOT force you to write "visually". You can write normal code and NEVER look at a picture. However, after you're done, if to see the flow of your entire program (not just one function) as a sequence diagram then you can get that done. The language syntax is "normal" syntax and has all the power o a modern language. Try it and see- feedback welcome. Disclaimer: I'm the one who started the project and lea…

Then I'm struggling to understand the value proposition. If I did want to stick to implementing it visually through sequence diagrams, can I implement all the examples through a sequence diagram and have it run on Ballerina? Really curious. If yes, I'd really like to try it. There are no instructions/examples on doing that.

EDIT: I found a link to using the graphical editor in the comments here.

https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/tools-ides/vscode-plugin/gra...

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#93

As a co-creator of a language (Julia) with a name that is feminine in most of the world, let me give some friendly advice regarding the name "Ballerina", which means "a female ballet dancer". The way you talk about Ballerina comes off rather tone deaf to gender issues. In the post linked here and elsewhere on the language website, the female ballerina—and she is definitely a she—is talked about as an object of grace…

Honestly, this reads like the comment of someone who, themself, can't handle feminine/maternal naming nor material. For example, a motherly massage to a gender-amorphous cartoon in a chair is your hot-button?

In an alternate dimension, this post is written about a language released in 2019 named "Python", an obvious phallic symbol. How are women supposed to take a programming language seriously that reminds them of a dong?! -- That's how ridiculous this "takedown" looks to me.

Definitely takes guts to name a programming language "Ballerina" in 2019, though. And probably not worth the hassle if these comments are to tell us anything. We probably agree there.

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#94
I've been programming in the Julia language for the past 4.5 years, and as somebody who has lived through the problems with Julia's name (getting incessantly teased by coworkers, friends, even my wife and kids, because of how much I like the Julia language and tend to gush about my enthusiasm for it), I think @StefanKarpinski really has hit the nail on the head here.

His suggestion of "Ballet" is very good, it still conveys all of the grace, elegance and beauty of ballet. Also, ballet dancers of all genders are pretty kickass athletes as well as incredible artists and performers.

Come to think about it, maybe I shouldn't recomend them changing from "Ballerina" to "Ballet", because if I came up with a new language, "Ballet" would definitely be pretty cool, and I'd want to use it myself!

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#95
post #42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the founder of WSO2. I'm from Sri Lanka. We have 100s of coders from Sri Lanka (not dozens). I'm the creator of Ballerina. I'm now its product manager. Ballerina is in its first GA release. Please elaborate on what features you see as "almost complete"? And regards to your comment about WSO2's inability to produce market-ready products, we have 500+ customers from all over the world for our products. What do we n…

Hi Sanjiva, I'm impressed. Of the product, and that you have that many excellent Java coders in Sri Lanka. Didn't expect that. Java really needs a safe structurally typed product. What are the major differences to Scala?

Why didn’t you expect that Sri Lanka has excellent Java coders?

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#96
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see a shoulder massage, I see someone giving support to and obviously nervous programmer :) Granted though I can't see where the name is coming from.

Yeah, just seems like maternal guidance to me. People nitpicking the gender of the programmer in a cartoon here is a great example of what I despise about modern tech discourse. The gender of the cartoon programmer isn't even that clear, it's so highly stylized. But I wonder if it was a woman giving another woman a massage instead, they'd be lambasted for pandering to the male fantasy of lesbianism.

Well I see a Leanan sídhe sucking some mysterious lifeforce out of the programmer while "stimulating certain areas of his brain". I don't know what to make of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muse_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Spac...

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#97

As a co-creator of a language (Julia) with a name that is feminine in most of the world, let me give some friendly advice regarding the name "Ballerina", which means "a female ballet dancer". The way you talk about Ballerina comes off rather tone deaf to gender issues. In the post linked here and elsewhere on the language website, the female ballerina—and she is definitely a she—is talked about as an object of grace…

It's a name, calm down. This is a terrible slippery slope we found ourselves falling down. We're about at the bottom of the hill where nothing can ever be said.

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#98
post #67
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm the founder of WSO2 which developed Ballerina. Also the person who started the project and lead it. Congrats and thank you! > We promoted Ballerina like that because we are proud of the work we do and wanted to show it off to people. And rightly proud! > You may not like the work we produce but trying to say its to get "consultancy work in India" is rather racist. Saying it's to get "consultancy work in India"…

I think the racist bit might be assuming the primarily Sri Lankan company is from India.

that seems geographically/culturally ignorant rather than racist, but maybe i missed it

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#99

As a co-creator of a language (Julia) with a name that is feminine in most of the world, let me give some friendly advice regarding the name "Ballerina", which means "a female ballet dancer". The way you talk about Ballerina comes off rather tone deaf to gender issues. In the post linked here and elsewhere on the language website, the female ballerina—and she is definitely a she—is talked about as an object of grace…

It's a name, calm down. This is a terrible slippery slope we found ourselves falling down. We're about at the bottom of the hill where nothing can ever be said.

You see the part where he's speaking from experience?

Re: Ballerina, a language with structural type system

#100
post #18
post #9

I've never heard of this language, but it looks like a cross between TypeScript and Java. The "Why Ballerina" points on the front page are intriguing, but none of the other materials seem to fill in the next level of detail. The diagram is the code... so this is a visual language? Where are the example diagrams? The language is built so that it's easy to access a service over a network? Tell me more. Show me somethin…

There's a link to 'by example' docs at the top, next to download: https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/by-example/

If that page has a single example with a diagram in it, I have yet to find it.
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