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Meet Lux, A New Lisp-like Language (javaworld.com)

Drawing on Haskell, Clojure, and ML, the new Lux language first targeted the Java Virtual Machine, but will be a universal, cross-platform language. An anonymous reader quotes JavaWorld: Currently in an 0.5 beta release, Lux claims that while it implements features common to Lisp-like languages, such as macros, they're more flexible and powerful in Lux... [W]hereas Clojure is dynamically typed, as many Lisp-like languages have been, Lux is statically typed to reduce bugs and enhance performance. Lux also lets programmers create new types programmatically, which provides some of the flexibility found in dynamically typed languages. The functional language Haskell has type classes, but Lux is intended to be less constraining. Getting around any constraints can be done natively to the language, not via hacks in the type system.
There's a a 16-chapter book about the language on GitHub.

205 comments

  1. Oh hell no by tietokone-olmi · · Score: 2

    We don't need another "bad ML in Lisp's clothes" language.

    1. Re:Oh hell no by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Or a bad common lisp in Haskell clothing?

    2. Re:Oh hell no by DivineKnight · · Score: 1

      Thank you. To which I add "Kill it, kill it! Burn it with fire! Stop it before it breaches quarantine!"

    3. Re:Oh hell no by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Funny

      [W]hereas Clojure is dynamically typed, as many Lisp-like languages have been, Lux is statically typed to reduce bugs and enhance performance

      "Kill it, kill it! Burn it with fire! Stop it before it breaches quarantine!"

      Shoot it with silver bullets, drive a wooden stake through its heart, burn the body, sprinkle the ashes with salt and holy water, seal the ashes into an iron urn covered with runes, weld it shut and bury it at a crossroads under the full moon. Then dust off and nuke the site from orbit. Even after that, I'm going to have a hard time falling asleep.

    4. Re: Oh hell no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes we do.

    5. Re:Oh hell no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We don't need another "bad ML in Lisp's clothes" language.

      Tell us, great tietokone-olmi, what do we need?

    6. Re:Oh hell no by tietokone-olmi · · Score: 1

      To stop compensating for insufficient skill with the perpetual study of new tools.

    7. Re:Oh hell no by lucasnate1 · · Score: 0

      The whole point of tools is to compensate for insufficient skills. If you think otherwise, please ditch your dog and improve your sense of smell, please ditch your knife and fork and use your teeth, etc.

    8. Re:Oh hell no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you want that you can already use Kawa. Jeesh.

    9. Re:Oh hell no by tietokone-olmi · · Score: 1

      >The whole point of tools is to compensate for insufficient skills. If you think otherwise, [...]

      But I don't. Read the comment over.

    10. Re:Oh hell no by lucasnate1 · · Score: 0

      I did. I know that there are some skills that I will never have, therefore I try to find tools to handle these skills for me. I agree with you that fad chasing is bad, but I also think that there are skills that I want to move from humans to computers, and this is done by creating/promoting new tools.

    11. Re: Oh hell no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blow the planet to pieces with the Death Star superlaser then send in the spaceship from "Asteroids" to blow up the pieces. Bury the arcade machine with the E.T. Atari cartridges.

    12. Re: Oh hell no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought this was the whole point of computers. To make our lives easier.

    13. Re: Oh hell no by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

      The more mutually-incompatible Lisp-like languages the better, I say.

      Maybe we could follow this up with yet another incompatible Prolog-alike!

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    14. Re:Oh hell no by tietokone-olmi · · Score: 1

      So how come your comment doesn't at all relate to the substitution of fundamental skill with the chasing of "the tool that'll wipe my ass, this time for sure"? The computing equivalent of toilet paper was invented far before Java, after all.

  2. So who's behind this new language? by Nova+Express · · Score: 2

    Could it be... SATAN ?

    --
    Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)

    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/

    1. Re:So who's behind this new language? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So who

      Eduardo Julián, a software developer and designer in the Dominican Republic.

  3. Just what the world needed most urgently... by ffkom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... yet another programming language. Next, please work on a new HDMI standard, another E-car charging plug and why not invent another lens-mount for cameras, while you're at it? :-)

    1. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by DivineKnight · · Score: 1

      Can we bring back HD-DVDs and the DIVX videodisc format while we are at it?

    2. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by murdocj · · Score: 1

      How about another USB connector standard?

    3. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, that could actually be useful (so far pretty much every USB connector invented has been flimsy rubbish - possibly by design as a form of built-in obsolescence).

    4. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Tough+Love · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Or does the world urgently need another random person on the internet to post random angst to an article that they have not read and most likely would not understand if they did?

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    5. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by istartedi · · Score: 1

      Not until we solve the mystery of how the first insertion is wrong 90% of the time when in theory it should be 50%. A working theory of this could lead to free energy, faster-than-light travel, or gas station sushi that won't make you sick.

      --
      For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    6. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by PoopJuggler · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You couldn't be more wrong. New programming languages is exactly what we need especially as we approach the end of "Moore's Law" with the discrete type of fabrication we do nowadays. Sooner or later the world will realize that in order to build really complex software, on the order of functioning neurological networks or quantum systems, we will need to evolve the languages we use to describe those systems so that we can describe them quickly. The software we write currently is dogshit compared what we could be creating, and all these new LISPy functional languages are an attempt to move to the next level. Instead of writing 100 for() loops our languages will need to describe the exact same construct in a handful of instructions. Not machine instructions but language instructions. Creating really advanced software takes so long currently because our languages are primitive. Compare programming a 6502 in assembly back in 1980 to programming in Java nowadays. Using modern languages and compilers you can write code 1,000,000 times faster, clearer and more complex in the same amount of time. Software will never get more advanced without a massive paradigm shift in the underlying languages we use to describe systems that will have ever-increasing complexity, because you can't just squeeze out more lines of code in 8 hrs from the same humans, and you can't just throw more humans at the problem. We need to start coding much much "smarter", almost writing languages that just describe a system in very general terms, and have the computer actually do the "coding." Either way, the future will not be primitive imperative languages like C/C++/Java, but something far more declarative in nature.

    7. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (so far pretty much every USB connector invented has been flimsy rubbish - possibly by design as a form of built-in obsolescence).

      While I agree that Micro plugs are flimsy rubbish, I've never had a Type-A, Type-B nor Mini plug fail.

    8. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Chuck+Messenger · · Score: 2

      There's no possibility for a better programming language! We already have the ultimate programming language - why would we want another?!

      (BTW, what is the language which we're supposed to be happy with?)

    9. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      (BTW, what is the language which we're supposed to be happy with?)

      Probably either Brainfuck or Visual Basic.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    10. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Compare programming a 6502 in assembly back in 1980 to programming in Java nowadays. Using modern languages and compilers you can write code 1,000,000 times faster, clearer and more complex in the same amount of time.

      So that what used to take a week to write in 6502 asm now takes less than a second to write in Java? Not disagreeing with your post, just taking issue with your scaling factor in the interest of making a better argument. Agree that OP couldn't be more wrong.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    11. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by ffkom · · Score: 1

      You do realize that LISP is one of the older programming languages, around for decades, and apparently, its popularity stagnates on a pretty low plateau?
      Dozens of LISP-derivatives have also been invented over the years, and yet not even GPUs or other architectures (that one could think to better fit the LISP way of applying side-effect-free code to lists of things) is written in any of those derivatives at a significant scale.
      If you look at newer languages that have become popular in the past 10 years, those are especially primitive ones (like PHP, GLSL or JavaScript), and there is seriously no indication at all that this is going to change.

    12. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by ffkom · · Score: 0

      There is no "ultimative programming language". Programming languages are tools, of which there way more than will be realistically maintained until they become stable, mature, and known widely.
      If only every 10th person who felt inclined to implement yet another programming language had written something really useful - like some email/calendar client that doesn't suck, or a videoconferencing MCU that works just fine - mankind would be much better off.

    13. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > you look at newer languages that have become popular in the past 10 years, those are especially primitive ones (like PHP, GLSL or JavaScript), and there is seriously no indication at all that this is going to change.

      It probably isn't going to change. For better or for worse, many programmers are self-taught and math-averse which is funny in a field which is basically applied mathematics.

      That said, I'm gonna use LISP since it's good (no matter how popular - is this a high school now?) and be more productive than the ones that don't use it. More money and less drudgery for me. Good.

    14. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by arth1 · · Score: 1

      So that what used to take a week to write in 6502 asm now takes less than a second to write in Java?

      But it doesn't. You'll spend a week upfront gathering the necessary black box libraries, and a day to write all the glue needed to write your one-line program.

    15. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      " as we approach the end of "Moore's Law" with the discrete type of fabrication we do nowadays"

      I am a bit (ok, a lot) baffled by your phrase "discrete fabrication". What do you mean?

    16. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      It takes way more than one second to write anything in Java. What's been gained in reusable code has been lost in bureaucracy. It's not called the COBOL of the 21st Century just because it's become the standard back-end language.

      PHP, I'll give you, but that's an entirely different nightmare...

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    17. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      As long as they don't have billions of dollars and lobbyists galore forcing the public to use it, who cares?

    18. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not until we solve the mystery of how the first insertion is wrong 90% of the time when in theory it should be 50%.

      Lack of guidance and/or visible "up" direction on both jack and plug.
      Approximately 40% of the time the first insertion direction is right but slightly off center so the user is tricked into believing that it is upside down.

    19. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Add to that, anyone who says that static typing improves performance clearly hasn't been paying attention to the last 30 years of compiler research. The StrongTalk team disproved this hypothesis quite soundly for any language that includes subtyping. The problem is that static type annotations must be conservative. They give you loose guarantees that are always true, but for optimisation you care about what tight guarantees that are usually true. Profiling (which JIT environments do at run time and AoT environments do as part of the build) gives far more useful information.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    20. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Not to mention collecting the newts' eyes and frogs' toes...

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    21. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      You might be interested in Viewpoint Research Intitute's (headed by Alan Kay) experiments with "language-based code compression". They believe that useful functionality of contemporary software should be expressible in much lesser amount of (much higher-level) source code. I also remember an Adobe executive stating something to the same effect (that, e.g., Photoshop's functionality should be ideally expressible in something like 10000-20000 lines of highly mathematical code).

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    22. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by DrXym · · Score: 1

      With USB C we may finally be at the point of having a connector that doesn't need replacing any time soon. It's amazing to think how many lifespans must have been wasted by people trying to plug a USB connectors into the socket the wrong way around.

    23. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by parkinglot777 · · Score: 1

      You do realize that LISP is one of the older programming languages, around for decades, and apparently, its popularity stagnates on a pretty low plateau?

      To me, there is another reason why LISP would never gain popularity these days -- recursive. To be efficient in this language, one should be able to think and program in recursive which requires a complete understanding of what is to be done or the program could easily go into an infinite loop. Most newer (so called) programmers nowadays can't think or program it that way. Instead, they think and program more in iterative way. Also, recursive has a down side which is limited memory. In order to be able to program with limited resources, again, one must understand and have a complete understanding of what is to be done... Not easy to find that type of people these days...

    24. Re: Just what the world needed most urgently... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    25. Re: Just what the world needed most urgently... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think that python just needs to get a machine code compiler, and the world will be satisfied.

    26. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by epine · · Score: 1

      Compare programming a 6502 in assembly back in 1980 to programming in Java nowadays.

      I see your 1978 and raise you a 1970.

      '''Prolog''' is a general-purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.

      Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is declarative: the program logic is expressed in terms of relations, represented as facts and rules. A computation is initiated by running a query over these relations.

      The language was first conceived by a group around Alain Colmerauer in Marseille, France, in the early 1970s and the first Prolog system was developed in 1972 by Colmerauer with Philippe Roussel.

      Prolog was one of the first logic programming languages, and remains the most popular among such languages today, with several free and commercial implementations available.

      The language has been used for theorem proving, expert systems, as well as its original intended field of use, natural language processing.

      Modern Prolog environments support creating graphical user interfaces, as well as administrative and networked applications.

      Prolog is well-suited for specific tasks that benefit from rule-based logical queries such as searching databases, voice control systems, and filling templates.

      Prolog did not fail because it was lacking in declarative concision. It failed because there's an annoying layer in between formal description in the problem domain and viable execution strategies in the solution domain.

      This layer, too, requires code. Of course, we can just write a formal description of the "annoying layer" as a Prolog program and then let Prolog do all the real work.

      Uh, wait a minute, recursion has somehow failed us here. How could that even be? Does not compute. Proceeding to Halt and Catch Fire.

    27. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by rthille · · Score: 1

      Interesting, given that micro plugs are rated for more insertions than minis:
      "The newer Micro-USB receptacles are designed for a minimum rated lifetime of 10,000 cycles of insertion and removal between the receptacle and plug, compared to 1,500 for the standard USB and 5,000 for the Mini-USB receptacle." [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ]

      --
      Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
    28. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by hoggoth · · Score: 1

      What really gets me is how most of the time I insert the USB connector correctly only on the THIRD try. That's proof of hyperdimensional geometry right there...

      --
      - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
    29. Re: Just what the world needed most urgently... by Chuck+Messenger · · Score: 1

      That, and a type system.

    30. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Oh thanks for dumping that word in here. Now the whole thread smells bad!

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    31. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by tigersha · · Score: 1

      You are joking, right?

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    32. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently... by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Prolog failed because the syntax is horrifying and the evaluation method is...weird. I wrote an entire compiler in Prolog once, it worked and worked well, but it was just a functional program with bad syntax. The compiler would have been better if written in Haskell (which, incidentally, the compiler was for, as I did not have a Haskell-like compiler at the time).

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    33. Re: Just what the world needed most urgently... by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Brainfuck with a type system. Wow. Now there is an interesting idea.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  4. What about Scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Is Scheme actually used for projects outside of college CS classrooms?

    IIRC Scheme was positioned as the "lightweight Common Lisp" (in the sense of LDAP being Lightweight X.500) back in the '90s.

    1. Re:What about Scheme? by AuMatar · · Score: 1, Interesting

      No. But in reality nothing other than C, C++, C#, Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Objective C, and Swift are. You can find one or two instances of something else, but basically it means the lead programmer had a hardon for the language- everything else combines makes up about 1-2% of all programs written. And really the last 2 in the above list exist only because Apple decided they wanted to try for developer lockin.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    2. Re: What about Scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Scheme sees little use, even in academia. Most colleges now use Python.

    3. Re:What about Scheme? by admin7087 · · Score: 2

      I use Racket for end-user applications and have also heard good things about chicken scheme. Racket is pretty complete and allows you to write powerful GUI applications easily if you can live with a noticeable application start time of >1 seconds and don't need the latest platform-specific gimmicks like animated tray icons or similar things. Proper deployment is a bit unnecessarily complicated and the Racket developers have not always clearly separated their own framework for the DrRacket GUI from what you need for general application development, but overall it's a very good language and tool. It doesn't feel more lightweight than CommonLisp, though, just a bit more convenient in many respects and module system in particular.

      Anyway, I should say that the focus on runtime-checking and loose typing is more of a disadvantage than an advantage. It encourages abstractions like using symbols as selectors rather than static enumerations, and these habits have no advantages. They produce runtime errors that slip easily even through extensive unit tests. Personally, I'd prefer to use a simple and straightforward Algol-clone with much of the expressivity of LISP (as many entities as possible should be 'first-class') but nevertheless a strong focus on compile-time checking and zero-cost abstractions, but haven't found a suitable language yet that also supports cross-platform GUIs.

    4. Re:What about Scheme? by mlts · · Score: 1

      I used Scheme for a class in college, mainly to demonstrate some AI concepts like states.

      As for the real world, I see four types of languages used:

      1: The mainstream Web languages. PHP, ASP, node.js, etc.
      2: The latest language in vogue. Rust and Swift 3 come to mind, because I keep getting E-mails about jobs asking for five years of Swift 3 for minimum required experience.
      3: The old standbys, C, C#, C++, VB .Net, Java, Objective-C, assembly, perl, and python. They are not shiny and new, but they are time tested enough that there are enough tools and an installed base to handle what is thrown at them.
      4: Specialty languages: Ada, FORTRAN, COBOL, ABAP, and others are still around, and one can make a living knowing them because they are not going away anytime soon.

    5. Re:What about Scheme? by Tough+Love · · Score: 0

      As for the real world, I see four types of languages used

      You are talking about the galley slaves of the internet. All the languages you listed are distinctly pedestrian. A programmer who knows nothing beyond the likes of those is not well rounded and better get adjusted to the idea of being a galley slave for their entire career.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    6. Re:What about Scheme? by digitig · · Score: 1

      You'll see a couple of others in niche domains, not just because of the lead programmer's obsessions. None of those languages is particularly suitable for safety critical software, for example, which is why Ada is still being used.

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    7. Re:What about Scheme? by StevenMaurer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A programmer who knows nothing beyond the likes of those is not well rounded and better get adjusted to the idea of being a galley slave for their entire career.

      If you aspire to the boardroom, I strongly suggest you learn a bit of PowerPoint, excel, and basic business understanding, The language used at that level is all P/L calculations, by which I don't mean PL/I, but "Profit and Loss".

      Insofar as fad languages are concerned, their main problem besides their terrible tool support, microscopic communities, non-existent code/library base to solve common problems, and lack of a clear niche that really only they fill best - is that the vast majority of actual programming work lies in understanding requirements and coming up with a reasonable set of approaches, designs, and patterns to fill them. For that, you don't need intellectual masturbation. You need to be smart and experienced enough to actually understand how to create a fully realized architecture actually capable of working, and not immediately falling over under load (with inscrutable error messages).

      Really, the only use that so many different hobby languages provide is a form of job lock-in, and a gateway keeping out people who aren't smart enough to solve the company's real problems.

      // Senior/Enterprise Architect

    8. Re:What about Scheme? by pauljlucas · · Score: 1

      And really [Objective C] in the above list exist only because Apple decided they wanted to try for developer lockin.

      Objective C was developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love at their then company Stepstone. It was then used by NeXT for NextStep. It got into Apple only because NeXT was bought by Apple and NextStep was the basis for Mac OS X. It had nothing to do with developer lock-in.

      --
      If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
    9. Re:What about Scheme? by guacamole · · Score: 1

      Scheme is now almost a history in college classrooms too. It was common back when MIT, Berkeley, and other top CS programs used SICP in their introductory courses. Now that many of those schools have dropped SICP and replaced it with a Python based course, the LISP now is on much weaker footing in the college instruction.

    10. Re:What about Scheme? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      You clearly identify as someone who has no exposure to anything outside a limited set of mundane languages. Your implied bifurcation fallacy between "fad languages" and "languages I know" is enough to see that. LISP, for example, can be pigeonholed as neither a fad language nor a hobby language. The Chinese have a term for your kind of world view: "frog in a well". The frog spends its entire life at the bottom of the well, and far above it can see a small part of the sky, which it believes to be the entire world outside its well. That's you.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    11. Re:What about Scheme? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      It was then used by NeXT for NextStep. It got into Apple only because NeXT was bought by Apple and NextStep was the basis for Mac OS X. It had nothing to do with developer lock-in.

      That's how it got into Apple, but it continued to be promoted by Apple mainly in the interest of developer lock-in.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    12. Re:What about Scheme? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      in reality nothing other than C, C++, C#, Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Objective C, and Swift are

      Kind of pointless trying to come up with a definitive list of languages that supposed to be the only ones in use when there exist many others with large industries revolving around them. I will add SQL and FORTRAN to the list. Ruby. Eiffel. So many in which important systems are written and not on your list.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    13. Re:What about Scheme? by pauljlucas · · Score: 1
      As opposed to what? Rewriting all their codebase at a time when Apple was on the brink of going under? They really needed to ship OS X to survive.

      You can make your argument about developer lock-in for Swift, but not Objective C.

      --
      If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
    14. Re:What about Scheme? by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      Yes, but the only reason anyone programs in it is that it was one of only 2 supported languages for MacOS and the only supported language for iOS for a very long time. Nobody actually liked the language. There was no critical mass of people begging Apple to make their platforms work for Objective C, they wanted to try and lock developers into a skillset that didn't transfer.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    15. Re:What about Scheme? by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      SQL isn't a programming language. Its a database language used with other languages. You wouldn't decide to use it instead of anything on the list above.

      Nobody actually uses Ruby or Eiffel for anything serious. I'll accept the addition of FORTRAN but purely for legacy reasons, nobody does new development in it.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    16. Re:What about Scheme? by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      Except that they also supported C++ via Carbon. They killed it in favor of Cocoa not because it was preferred, but because they wanted to create lockin.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    17. Re:What about Scheme? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Goddamnit. Why can't you loudmouth know-nothings just fuck off already?! You're a pox on the Internet.

      Typical Apple cultist?

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    18. Re:What about Scheme? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      It is not in doubt that SQL is a programming language, it has been proved Turing-complete. Not a general purpose programming language, I will grant you. You are dead wrong about Ruby or Eiffel for "anything serious". You are dead wrong about Fortran.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    19. Re:What about Scheme? by pauljlucas · · Score: 1

      There's also Objective C++. You could write just your UI code in Objective C and write all the rest of your application in C++ if you want.

      --
      If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
    20. Re:What about Scheme? by AuMatar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      One or two places deciding to use Ruby or Eiffel isn't a sufficient enough base to make me wrong. Ruby was a flash in the pan and is basically dead.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    21. Re:What about Scheme? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      Developer lock-in for Swift? Have you been to swift.org lately?

    22. Re:What about Scheme? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      ObjC is a great language. Far easier to learn than C++, and far more fun. And the compiler is free. No one stopped others from developing ObjC code bases.

    23. Re:What about Scheme? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      ... FORTRAN but purely for legacy reasons, nobody does new development in it.

      You are so laughably out of touch with reality that it's a wonder you can find your way to slashdot. You are so incredibly ignorant that it's a shame you were taught to breathe.

    24. Re:What about Scheme? by pauljlucas · · Score: 1

      Why is it that nobody reads ONLY what I actually write? I never said *I* am making any such argument either way. I said that the person who I responded to could make such an argument. I *never* said it would be a good argument.

      --
      If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
    25. Re:What about Scheme? by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 1

      That's how it got into Apple, but it continued to be promoted by Apple mainly in the interest of developer lock-in.

      Or maybe the people developing the tools were the same people who did it at Next, and so it was the expedient thing to do? Apple was nearly broke that the time. They were in no position to "lock in" anyone.
      Of course Apple, like any large large business, would prefer that their customers were locked in. But this is not an example nor evidence of it.

    26. Re:What about Scheme? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      If you're thinking about Chicken, I'd strongly suggest also trying Chez these days. The quality of implementation is quite incomparable.

      Also, static enumerations are probably not something you'd expect to find in the language family that adopted CLOS (or a CLOS-like system, if not the canonical CLOS) to solve the expression problem.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    27. Re:What about Scheme? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Modern implementations of Scheme and Lisp are very good as a foundation for implementing the languages in the fourth category, though. Especially Scheme could be considered a high-level assembly of sorts (solves all the problems you'd need for implementing basically any language but doesn't provide much in terms of implementing any particular language).

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    28. Re:What about Scheme? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      non-existent code/library base to solve common problems

      Well, if you keep hitting common problems, you'll never advance to solving uncommon problems like specialists do. That is the "clear niche" you're asking for. Take AllegroCache, for example. How you'd implement something like that in the language-hitting-common-problems of your choice is anyone's guess, but it will be messy in any case.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    29. Re:What about Scheme? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Keep in mind that MIT replaced Scheme with Python only in an introductory course for all freshmen (or most of them). CS people are still being taught advanced stuff in it.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    30. Re:What about Scheme? by DrXym · · Score: 1

      NextStep used Objective C for its front end. There is no reason it had to infect OS X. I assume that was a conscious decision by someone in Apple. The non-nefarious explanation is that some of the tech leads liked it and imposed it on everything they designed. The nefarious explanation is that Apple / Steve Jobs dictated its use to lock developers into the platform.

    31. Re:What about Scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Although a programming language can be demonstrated to be Turing complete, so can a cellular automaton.

      A language demonstrated to be Turing complete is not necessarily a programming language, even if it is a language.

    32. Re:What about Scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except, as anyone who has written both carbon code and cocoa code knows, cocoa is much easier and better organized, and more importantly, supported.

    33. Re:What about Scheme? by pauljlucas · · Score: 1

      [citation needed]

      --
      If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
    34. Re:What about Scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't be silly. Mac OS X is NextStep. They weren't rewriting OS X from scratch. They dumped classic Mac OS.

    35. Re:What about Scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. 99% of the APIs that actually make Swift usable are still closed source and iOS and OSX only. Nobody on Linux or Windows gives a fuck about Swift.

    36. Re: What about Scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well create your own API then for your target platform. The language is open source. Dig deep, learn what you need.

    37. Re:What about Scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In his statement, there's nothing that praises Apple...

    38. Re:What about Scheme? by jpablo1 · · Score: 1
      Hey Senior Slash Enterprise Architect,

      Obviously the parent post is ridiculous; nevertheless disregarding all non mainstream languages as "fad languages" is equally absurd. Apologies if that's not what you meant.

      You have a point in that climbing up the corporate ladder doesn't require any knowledge of sophisticated / new languages, but rather business insights. It might even be detrimental to such goals, since instead of spending your time reading about business you spend your time reading about type systems, architecture, etc.

      Fortunately for the world there's some people whose interest lies elsewhere: advancing the state of the art, finding creative ways to build better, safer software, etc. In some cases those advances will take years or decades to percolate to the industry.

      // Just a random coder.

    39. Re:What about Scheme? by michael_wojcik · · Score: 1

      Several billion extant lines of COBOL, and quite a few of Fortran, say you're wrong.

      And are people still developing software in those languages? Yes, yes they are.

    40. Re:What about Scheme? by michael_wojcik · · Score: 1

      One or two places deciding to use Ruby or Eiffel isn't a sufficient enough base to make me wrong. Ruby was a flash in the pan and is basically dead.

      And this was modded "Insightful" by four people who 1) have mod points (as do I, but I'm commenting instead), 2) have no idea what the software industry is actually doing, and 3) don't know what "insightful" means.

    41. Re:What about Scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The ironic thing is that "fad languages" and narrow niche ones can be the difference between a paying job versus having the job offshored. PHP and Java can easily be sent to an offshore dev house that will work the job for peanuts with guaranteed code quality. That, or a domestic place will throw a platoon of H-1Bs at the language.

    42. Re:What about Scheme? by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Maybe it was continued to be developed by Apple otherwise they would have had to rewrite their entire damn OS? Microsoft used C++ and developed it because otherwise they would have had to rewrite their entire damn OS?? Maybe? Seriously, languages have something called momentum, and once you started (or bought it, like Apple did) you are stuck.

      Where do you people get you hate from?

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    43. Re:What about Scheme? by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Just because someone states normal engineering practice which involves momentum of tools used to implement a system, just like happened in Microsoft and pretty much all companies does make not one a cultist. Buying a system in language X and going on with it is not not bad, it is normal.

      Besides, Objective C is not that bad. IT is certainly better than programming in C, and the clusterfck that is Qt or Gnome. Have you actually ever used interface builder? It is a brilliant piece of design. Apple took it from Next and developed it further because it is really good, not because they are a cult.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    44. Re:What about Scheme? by tigersha · · Score: 1

      "There is no reason it had to infect OS X"

      OS X was not a rewrite, it was NextStep v2. You take what is there and go on with it. Besides, Objective C is waaaaay better than C++ and God forbid, C.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    45. Re:What about Scheme? by tigersha · · Score: 1

      I use Ruby for lots of serious things, but whatever.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    46. Re:What about Scheme? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      ...the clusterfck that is Qt or Gnome. Have you actually ever used interface builder?

      Hah, you clearly have never used Qt, but you are willing to mouth off about it anyway. When I interact with Apple cultists I always come away feel like I got something on me.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    47. Re:What about Scheme? by guacamole · · Score: 1

      What "advanced stuff"? Please. As the baby boomer generation of the CS professors is dying out or being retired, the LISP is going away with them. LISP brought a few cool ideas into the programming world, such as functions as first class citizens or other elements of functional programming to the masses, but none of that justified compulsive teaching of LISP for like a half of century. It's quite telling when you observe that LISP is being used in the academia for DECADES and yet it just doesn't stick with its students in the real world. Something is wrong with it.

  5. sorry by ooloorie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    first targeted the Java Virtual Machine, but will be a universal, cross-platform language

    This may be nice for Java developers, but I can't think of any significant language that started off targeting the JVM and then successfully moved to another platform. That's because languages targeting the JVM get bogged down by the limitations of the JVM and the get entangled in the Java libraries.

    If you want to develop a new language these days, start by targeting the LLVM.

    1. Re:sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I always target the PoopInMyMouthVM.

    2. Re:sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We should be getting away from Java at all costs and yet the only thing the open source developper community can do is target the JVM. At this point all hail to C++, C, Scheme, Fortran, Ada and Cobol. Fuck Java, fuck the jvm and fuck Oracle. Oh and fuck the tens (hundreds) of new useless languages that target exclusively the JVM.

    3. Re:sorry by ooloorie · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Wow, what a *ton* of bullshit here. Honestly you should be proud - it's not so easy to be so completely wrong.

      By all means, feel free to show any significant language that has managed to make the leap from the JVM to other platforms.

      The most interesting and successful new languages on the JVM, Scala and Clojure, have tried for years to create non-JVM backends and failed to deliver anything other than toys.

    4. Re:sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So name a single language of significance that made the jump from JVM to elsewhere? Instead of saying they are completely wrong twice, you could have just demonstrated it with an even shorter comment.

    5. Re:sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
    6. Re:sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no, llvm is no only option. gcc have nice jit. very nice.

    7. Re:sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They said "significant" languages. Not niche toys.

    8. Re: sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kotlin is no toy, and its backed and developed by a major company (JetBrains).

    9. Re: sorry by crashumbc · · Score: 1

      Who? Seriously? who?

    10. Re:sorry by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Kotlin suffers from the same limitations as Clojure and Scala (both of which also have JavaScript backends), and in addition is pretty obscure.

      All those languages are just rearranging deck chairs on the JVM Titanic.

    11. Re:sorry by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Don't forget Ceylon :)

    12. Re:sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Say what now? Maybe you have heard of a magical language known as Python? Or a little thing called Javascript? I agree that we need to run away screaming from anything Oracle can make any claim over, but the rise of Java in open source (by Github stats) is way more likely to be related to companies opening the code on existing stuff than a bunch of programmers looking around and saying "Java!" when asked what tool they like. Languages that target the JVM are at least partially an attempt to keep the massive collection of Java libraries without actually having to use the language.

    13. Re: sorry by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      The intellij guys.

    14. Re:sorry by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 2

      Java did. Besides running in the JVM it is also quite successful in Android's Dalvik and now ART.

    15. Re:sorry by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      And Gosu and Groovy :-)

    16. Re:sorry by ooloorie · · Score: 2

      Java did. Besides running in the JVM it is also quite successful in Android's Dalvik and now ART.

      Native implementations of Java have pretty much failed. And Dalvik and ART are just incremental enhancements of JVM.

      I'm sorry if it still isn't obvious: as far as I'm concerned, a "universal cross-platform language" needs to have a decent native code implementation, otherwise it's not "universal".

    17. Re:sorry by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      If you want to develop a new language these days, start by targeting the LLVM.

      Or Scheme, if you don't want to drag tens of megabytes of C++ code around.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    18. Re:sorry by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1
      Quoting Wikipedia:

      Kotlin is designed to interoperate with Java code and is reliant on Java code from the existing Java Class Library, such as the collections framework.

      That doesn't at all sound like "leaping from the JVM" has been accomplished yet.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    19. Re: sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's an insignificant toy language that has gone nowhere and is going nowhere.

    20. Re:sorry by abies · · Score: 1

      By all means, feel free to show any significant language that has managed to make the leap from the JVM to other platforms.

      Java itself - it got ported to .NET vm and renamed to C# 1.0...

    21. Re:sorry by firepoet78 · · Score: 1

      I believe Clojure, itself, in the form of ClojureScript, is an example of a language that made the leap from the JVM to other platforms. There is even a quite strong push to make libraries portable across both platforms since there are some subtle differences. For more check out https://github.com/clojure/clo...

    22. Re:sorry by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      I believe Clojure, itself, in the form of ClojureScript, is an example of a language that made the leap from the JVM to other platforms.

      AFAIK, there are no widely-used backends for Clojure other than JVM and JavaScript (there have been two attempts at LLVM backends and another one at a CLR backend). Almost all Clojure code is run on the JVM in practice.

    23. Re:sorry by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Java itself - it got ported to .NET vm and renamed to C# 1.0...

      It didn't just get "ported", it addressed the major problems of the JVM: poor native code interfaces, lack of generics, bad semantics for built-in types, and lack of value types.

      The differences between the .NET VM and the JVM mean that the .NET VM is actually a reasonable target for a general purpose language that later gets an LLVM backend, while the JVM is not.

    24. Re:sorry by firepoet78 · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't know how to validate the "Almost all" claim. ClojureScript, which is not run on the JVM, but only compiled by it, is becoming extremely popular. And almost every popular library I've depended on in my projects has had recent or not-so-recent updates to be ClojureScript-compatible. I'd count that as making a leap, but you are right, it is still coupled to the JVM in some way.

    25. Re:sorry by jpablo1 · · Score: 1

      ScalaJS [https://www.scala-js.org/] is definitely not a toy. I'd say is production ready nowadays.

    26. Re:sorry by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't know how to validate the "Almost all" claim. ClojureScript, which is not run on the JVM, but only compiled by it, is becoming extremely popular.

      Again, you're missing the point. A JavaScript backend is easy to do for just about any language because it doesn't have to be very good.

      Lux might conceivably replace Clojure or Scala (though I doubt it); it's in the same JVM-derived language family.

      But Lux will likely never compete with general purpose ("universal") languages like Go, Swift, C#, C++, etc. No language that started out on the JVM ever made the jump, and I gave some reasons why.

    27. Re:sorry by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Clojure is used in the browser with a JavaScript implementation and it is not really a toy, but whatever.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    28. Re:sorry by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      I didn't say "all languages based on the JVM are useless/toys", I said "languages targeting the JVM get bogged down by the limitations of the JVM and the get entangled in the Java libraries."

      But, yeah, whatever.

  6. Just what the world needed most urgently...sex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yup, a one way world of doing things. That's why penises and vaginas only operate one way.

    1. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently...sex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about the other genders?

    2. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently...sex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He didn't say anything about gender, he said something about anatomy. And it looks like he was being somewhat facetious too.

      Do you have some chip or grudge to get out or something? Here, I will give you ammunition, there are no genders, just programmed beliefs in people's minds and a tendency to overlook the Darwinist nature of sex being productive in one sense and destructive in another as far as evolutionary standpoints go. Pick the wrong path and you remove your genes from society. Pick another wrong path and you pollute the genes of society for at least another generation. You know, the survival of the fittest and genetic transference and all that crap.

    3. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently...sex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Delusions don't count.

    4. Re:Just what the world needed most urgently...sex by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      This is all holograms anyways.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  7. We love functional languages except using them. by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Functional Languages are really cool in theory. However I find that for Real World development. Your code is often too tight for proper maintenance. Where Procedural and OOP is much better at fixing issues.

    While yes *you* are the greatest developer in the world, and can write code better than everyone else in the world. It doesn't stop the people who pays your bills from giving you bad specifications, or come across problems that were not thought of before.
    In my decades of experience, I have found to be nimble you need to keep humble and figure that your code will not end up like it was planned, so you need to put in hooks for expansion and think on solving issues that are not asked for. As well assuming that they may be some data that could cause your code to break and you will need to fix it quickly.

    Functional Languages often become a bit too dense to fix. And god help you if you want to unload that project to someone else so you can work on something more interesting.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by Yxven · · Score: 1

      I also cannot write functional code nearly as well as I can write procedural/oop code.

      That said, how do you know imperative code isn't easier to maintain because you have more experience writing imperative code?

    2. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Use an ML based language like ocaml or F# if you like falling back on procedural and OOP technique. Both languages allow procedural constructs and F# has elegant OOP features.

    3. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > Your code is often too tight for proper maintenance.

      The hell does that mean?

      Anyway. John Carmack's considered opinion on the matter is that the _only_ sane way to program is to program in a functional, share-nothing style at _every_ possible opportunity. It eliminates several classes of errors, makes code _so_ much easier to reason about, and frequently makes it absolutely fucking trivial to parallelize your routines. I'm no super-programmer, but my professional experience has lead me to share Carmak's opinion on the matter.

      Obviously, share-nothing interacts poorly with "operate on multi-gigabyte-datastructures", so the pragmatic programmer will cautiously share pointers to such structures and limit the amount of code that must work with this shared data.

    4. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Maybe with enough training and experience, one may be able to pull it off, but a future maintenance programmer may not be able to follow your technique well. It increases the hiring and training burden for your organization.

      There are techniques that work better under ideal conditions, but ideal conditions are hard to come by.

    5. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      The future maintenance programmer will be most likely better educated, given the fact that we will be able to distill the relevant math into a better teachable form in the future.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      The hell does that mean?

      In coding if you are often too clever you often make code that is very dense in mathematics. Taking advantage of bit overflows, and other mathematical functions that happen to perform the behavior you are trying to achieve. For example If you are making a Mario type of game, you can use a sine function to simulate the jump effect. vs. making some more codier version where you have a loop that is decrementing how many pixels to to move up after each step.
      The first approach is good and will get you an A+ on your homework assignment. However, after making the game, you find that you now need to account for obstacles. Perhaps different wind forces... Where you will either need to change your sin function around with different variables, which will need a lot of testing. Or just put in a sloppy old IF statement to change your variable when a condition is in place.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    7. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The future maintenance programmer will be most likely better educated

      perhaps, but they will never have heard about lux, haskell or swift either.
      I'm a future maintenance programmer for C codes. And I curse the original authors to any and all circles of hell whenever they have tried to make their code "elegant". Tight code is just a major PITA to decrypt.
      And completely pointless, the (modern) compiler don't care.

    8. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      The future maintenance programmer will be most likely better educated

      {snark} They can learn it all while riding in their flying car {/snark}

      I see no evidence of an increase in such education over time. Statistically, programming is a dead-end career such that investing in high-end techniques may not pay off.

    9. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      I imagine some Sheldon-like dude saying, "I refuse to play Mario unless he's physics-compliant. Screw cheapo incrementor variables!"

    10. Re:We love functional languages except using them. by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 1

      Functional Languages are really cool in theory. However I find that for Real World development. Your code is often too tight for proper maintenance. Where Procedural and OOP is much better at fixing issues.

      That's not the experience we had at Ericsson.

      I can't help but think that you haven't really been involved in designing, building, fielding, and maintaining large systems based on FP. I have. With Erlang in particular we saw a four to ten fold increase in productivity.

      And "too dense to fix" didn't even show up on the radar as a problem. Not by a long shot. Quite the opposite in fact, not having to wade through page after page of boiler plate (that could still trip you up, mind you) does wonders for focusing the mind on what the real problem actually was. As a colleague of mine was fond of putting it "After a day with Erlang I feel like I've solved business/domain problems, rather than 'doing programming'.

      And good/competent, to half decent programmers could be retrained in a matter of days. The ones that couldn't, we didn't want anyway. And you shouldn't either.

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
  8. Great news for my ( and ) keys by AbrasiveCat · · Score: 1

    My "(" and ")" keys haven't got enough wear on them. This will help level out the wear pattern on my keyboard. Thanks!

    1. Re:Great news for my ( and ) keys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My "(" and ")" keys haven't got enough wear on them. This will help level out the wear pattern on my keyboard.
      Thanks!

      Yuppie, now we get not only all the idiosincrasies of dealing with ((())(()()) but also [][][][][[[[[[] and {{{{}}{{{, and maybe even python-esque [space] [end-space] [tab] [end-tab] delimiters all in the same freaking language.
      I propose a new language that uses any character as block delimiter. The more the merrier.

    2. Re:Great news for my ( and ) keys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Yuppie" ...eh, what??

    3. Re:Great news for my ( and ) keys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have Unicode added emoticons yet?
      I bet we'll see a "like LISP but uses emoticons as delimiters"-language soon.

    4. Re: Great news for my ( and ) keys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Func NewFoo (-: int Bar:-) (-:

      Print (-: Bar :-) :-)

  9. Sorry but no Java VM by admin7087 · · Score: 1

    Otherwise it looks interesting. However, I'd rather wish to see a new strongly-typed cross-platform language with garbage collector, very strict compile-time optimization (not dynamic at all), a built-in GUI toolkit and implicit block syntax.

    1. Re:Sorry but no Java VM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then go write one and stop being a bum.

    2. Re:Sorry but no Java VM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sounds like Python to me! except, give up on that strong typing compiler thing, that's just training wheels.

    3. Re:Sorry but no Java VM by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      The funny thing about your comment is that I'm currently doing that. (But it's in a very early stage and going to take at least two years until it's usable for anything.)

    4. Re:Sorry but no Java VM by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      And the author is choosing to avoid 2 years by bootstrapping an established platform.

    5. Re:Sorry but no Java VM by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      The Java VM has too many disadvantages. I'm planning to use LLVM and I'm fairly certain that that step will take the least of my time (not that it's trivial either)...

    6. Re:Sorry but no Java VM by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Understood and you're most welcome to build your own runtime.

      The author is just choosing the well worn path of, say, clojure - which started life on the JVM but runs to varying maturity on the commonly deployed platforms of Javascript (in browser) and CLR (windows).

    7. Re:Sorry but no Java VM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That may be true, but one huge advantage for any language targeting the JVM is a much easier migration path to that language.

      It's easy to sell a team on "I'll just replace this with one class with Scala (or Eta, or Clojure, or Kotlin, or Lux, or Groovy, or ...) and it will be 10x as short, easy to understand, and easy to maintain". It's a lot harder to sell a team on "We're going to rewrite our entire code base in Rust (or Go, or Haskell, or OCaml, or Ruby, or whatever current flavor-of-the-month language is targeting LLVM)."

  10. Re:Meh by mrbester · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "Lux is statically typed to reduce bugs and enhance performance"

    Citation needed showing actual proof this is true and not just someone hating on dynamic typing.

    --
    "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
  11. Re:Meh by murdocj · · Score: 2

    How hard is it to see that automatically detecting bugs at compile time is superior to running into them at random at runtime?

  12. Re:Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Statically type languages fix half the problem. They cannot guarantee the program will execute correctly though. And since most problems arise during execution... you're back to square 1.5 instead of 1.

  13. Re:Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Citation needed showing actual proof this is true and not just someone hating on dynamic typing.

    Just use your common sense. Let's take a simple statement:

    a = b + c;

    If b or c is floating-point type, the dynamic language interpreter will have to detect that at runtime (via an 'if' statement) before doing the actual floating point addition.

    A compiled language will detect this at compile time, so at runtime, there is no need to check the types of b or c. It will simply run the floating point addition code, thus eliminating the two runtime type checks for b and c.

  14. Re:Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nevertheless, whenever I have written something in Ada, it worked correctly the first time it compiled. The programs weren't very complicated, I admit, but still that has impressed me. However, it takes an endless time and many, many fairly informative compiler complaints to get even a simple program to compile...

  15. Re:Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you think a "large" code base "takes > 1 hour to compile" then you have no comprehension of what a large code base looks like.

  16. Re:Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even back in the Pascal days you could define functions whose input was "Integers in the range of 10 to 50 inclusive" and if the compiler couldn't prove that a particular function call was safe, it would tell you.

    You are describing the weak guarantees available in the type systems you have used. Try using something like Haskell and then tell me that the type system doesn't prevent meaningful bugs.

  17. Re: Golden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't think it matters what server it would have been on. And FWIW, all the email leaks thus far did not originate from her supposedly insecure private email server.

  18. Re:Golden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes. Just like we're supposed to pretend Hillary's an honest populist who cares about the little people. Welcome to the Ministry of Truth.

  19. Taktentus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here is some small http://taktentus.herokuapp.com/

  20. I am going to switch today!!! by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 1

    No more C++ and all those silly libraries, no more Python and the way too convenient coding there and its crazy tie-ins with stats and ML libraries. I want something that is poorly documented, celebrated only in a small academic circle, and makes me do everything from scratch and have little access to the underlying OS.

    Screw productivity and ever finishing a damn thing.

  21. Sigh. YANUL: yet another Null/Useless language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gee. Another language for the sake of creating a programming langauge.
    And claiming it is wonderful.
    Impressively worthless/idiotic.
    But wait, there is more! It is an improvement on ! What a load of useless drivel.
    Actual systems have state and access to limited physical systems (hard drives, USB keys, etc). "Pure" functional language weenies are utterly clueless.

  22. Re: Golden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I used to dream about an internet where it was normal for everybody to have their own e-mail/web/file server, in stead of being dependent on server farms owned by the ad industry. Situations like Clinton's would be routinely and preventatively solved by either just forwarding everything incoming/outgoing to archive@administration.gov.cc or in case of high security targets by replacing their private server by a vetted official server (just pull it out of the wall socket and plug in a new one, with current tech the whole thing does not need to be larger than a lightweight 8x8x5 cm^3 box).

  23. Inevitable XKCD reference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The title is "Standards".

    https://xkcd.com/927/

    1. Re:Inevitable XKCD reference by crashumbc · · Score: 1

      I love you

  24. Re:Golden by amiga3D · · Score: 1

    He doesn't need to say anything. It's already been thoroughly debunked and the only people repeating it are idiots who haven't gotten the word. The whole thing was a scam by a guy at 4chan. Once you actually look at the story it just falls apart on it's own. Even the NYT refused to print it.

  25. Re:Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And since most problems arise during execution...

    ALL problems related to running software arise during execution, genius.

  26. Re:Golden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't know if it happened or not, but it is plausible. That alone scares the living shit out of me.

  27. Scala Backends by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They may have done a really bad job with marketing, but Scala.js is considered production ready and more than a toy.
    Scala Native, the first official effort to get Scala compiling via LLVM, is less than a year and a half old.

  28. Use case? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    What is this new language good for?

  29. Re: Golden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you want something to pee on you - let n1ggers and indo-chimps do it, don't discriminate. Also, sand n1ggers can shit standing up on the street, you might want that too.

  30. Re: Golden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Too bad americans have only butchy smelly sand n1ggers dressed in burkas left to serve as females.

  31. Type-checking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... Lux is statically typed to reduce bugs ...

    First there was Pascal, which got a moderate following outside universities. Then came Modula, which nobody used because it was too strongly typed. Then there was a massive branching of language paradigms (object-driven, object-orientated, lists & sets, functional) which slowly moved over to business use. Then there was Haskell, which has a small following outside universities. A big problem with a new language is finding people to use it and share a code-base.

    Recently Apple and Google created their own languages and used their global position to promote them. Another language means another library to learn, another compiler to install, and many times, also another development environment to install and learn. (Eclipse is removing some of that burden but it has a steep learning curve.) When a new language was a rarity, it was easy to crowd-source developers for it. Now there's a new language every month, there aren't sufficient developers available to make it popular.

  32. Of course by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    That's what we sorely need - yet another silly language, so that its author can inflict his or her personal tastes on the rest of us. If anything is missing in the computing world, that is languages. While you are at it, throw in another development methodology - Agile is beginning to look old and tired, and a new fad is needed.

    1. Re:Of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's what we sorely need - yet another silly language, so that its author can inflict his or her personal tastes on the rest of us. If anything is missing in the computing world, that is languages. While you are at it, throw in another development methodology - Agile is beginning to look old and tired, and a new fad is needed.

      Like Python.

  33. Before I judge Lux... by Captain+Ramage · · Score: 0

    Before I judge Lux, I'm waiting for the Lux#.net implementation.

  34. Re:Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And a strongly typed language will not let you do it at all :), perhaps go as far as requiring you use a +. operator for adding floats, separate from the + operator.

    Indeed, it appears Lux does that, in a drastic way. Even < and > are not spared (CAML is notorious for + and +. and annoying newcomers with its strictness, but its less-than and greater-than are very generic, so you'll write a sort that works on ints, floats, chars, bools and weirder things even if you didn't intend it to be generic). From the Lux book :

    Whereas other programming languages often overload the math operators +, -, >, etc. for all numeric (and some non-numeric) types, Lux actual offers different versions for different types.

    The Nat operators are as follows: n.+, n.-, n.*, n./, n.%, n.=, n.<, n.<=, n.>, n.>=.

    The Int operators are as follows: i.+, i.-, i.*, i./, i.%, i.=, i.<, i.<=, i.>, i.>=.

    The Real operators are as follows: r.+, r.-, r.*, r./, r.%, r.=, r.<, r.<=, r.>, r.>=.

    The Frac operators are as follows: f.+, f.-, f.*, f./, f.%, f.=, f., f.>=.

    The differences may look trivial, but since the numeric types are treated differently in Lux, you must be aware of which function-set you're using when working with your data.

    Although, they then introduce sugar for the operators :

    To make things easier, there is a module named lux/math/simple, which introduces unprefixed macros for all the common numeric operations.

    Those macros analyse their inputs' types in order to automatically choose for you the correct functions in each case.

    That way, you get the benefit of having polymorphic math operators, through the magic of meta-programming.

    Oh, and you can definitely use those macros in conjunction with the infix macro!

    So, check lux/math/simple in the documentation for the Standard Library and have fun with your mathy code.

  35. gwt? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is gwt able to compile Lux into Javascript?

  36. Re: Golden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I used to dream about that, and a free and open Internet (capital "I"), a network of ideas and creation, transcending borders and national identities. I fully believed in the brave new digital world. But the dream died.

  37. Re:Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While that can (potentially) eliminate a class of bugs, I'd argue it's a relatively small set of possible bugs. I've seen a lot of people make the bold assumption that if it compiles, it must be right. A solid test suite to support the code is going to pay far bigger dividends than relying on the compiler.

  38. Re:Meh by murdocj · · Score: 1

    Think of compiling as automatically generated unit tests. Do you feel better about it now?

  39. Subverted Lisp syntax by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One big advantage of the Lisp syntax is that it allows editing code at higher abstraction level in a uniform way. In Emacs one can use paredit mode to directly manipulate the structure of a Lisp program by splitting, joining, and moving s-expressions instead of editing code as a sequence of lines of text like it is done with most other programming languages.

    Clojure’s syntax is not an improvement but a step backward as it undermines this advantage by not syntactically grouping everything that is grouped semantically (e. g. binding pairs in let) just to use fewer parentheses. And very unfortunately new Clojure-inspired Lisp dialects (like Lux) appear to inherit this syntactical deficiency.

  40. Re:Golden by maharvey · · Score: 1

    Why should we care? Porn is ubiquitous, and you can see much kinkier stuff from your local web-pimp. Hop over to fetlife and you can find someone to do it with. If it's that he paid: again so what? Prostitution ts legal in (parts of) the US and Canada.

    Oh the horror! Trump may have done something that I* do! But it's bad when he does it! (*Not saying you're into peeing hookers; likely your tastes would make Trump blush.)

    But really, what does this have to do with Lux?

  41. Ugly syntax by maharvey · · Score: 1

    One of the nice things about lisp is that it is so clean. Lux appears verbose and cluttered with odd symbols.

    Lisp:

    (defun hello ()
        "Hello, world!"
    )

    Lux:

    (;module: {#;doc "This will be our program's main module."}
            lux
            (lux (codata io)
                    [cli #+ program:]))

    (program: args
            (io (log! "Hello, world!")))