On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 17:50:01 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 16:20:48 UTC, Joakim wrote:
These languages may all have these problems, but I don't see
the connection to your original point about it not being good
to think you're the best.
Hm? I tried to say that it is not good to think that you have
the best programmers. Or that you are satisfied with only
appealing to the best programmers.
Yes, but when I pointed out that it's fine to think you're the
best as long as you stay focused on bettering the flaws you still
have, you responded with points about memory management and how
C++ can't be a "competitive high level language," seemingly
ignoring the topic at hand. Good to see you address it below.
There are some assumptions about "best" in that attitude that
isn't healthy for developing an ecosystem. First of all, it
might not be true, maybe the best programmers go elsewhere.
Second of all, programmers generally don't start out as "best".
And only appealing to experience programmers is not a good
long term strategy.
Thinking you're the best doesn't imply that inexperienced
programmers shouldn't show up, it just means they better think
they have the ability to someday be similarly good. ;) And when
you're smaller and trying to take on older languages with many
more users, you need some identity to rally your much smaller
group of insurgents: thinking you're the best is as good a
rallying cry as any other.
Finally, D is hardly pitched as an "expert-only" language, given
it makes pragmatic choices to use a GC by default and carry
forward the popular C syntax. It simply provides many more power
tools that you can use, if you're so inclined to go farther and
learn more.
Anyway, you probably have a lot more great programmers using
Javascript than any small language, measured in absolute
numbers. And when growing a eco system it is those absolute
numbers that matters. It doesn't matter if 99% are not good if
the other 1% can grow your infrastructure. And well, right now
that means developers can be very productive in that eco system
(e.g. TypeScript, Angular, React etc).
What would be better, a million JS programmers with 10k great
ones who "grow your infrastructure," or 150k D programmers with
30k great ones doing the same? Holding everything else
equivalent proportionally, I'd say the latter. Of course, a very
important factor could be how willing the million is to pay for
better tools, as that will lead to great tools programmers from
less-popular languages to swarm into JS for the money, but given
how much of the time all these dev tools are free, particularly
for JS, that doesn't matter as much.
Another huge factor is that you are fundamentally limited by the
language, it doesn't matter how many great devs work on speeding
up a fundamentally slow and inefficient language design, which a
core team of great programmers wouldn't have put out there in the
first place. :P
More programmers don't have a bachelors in CS than those who
do. I think you'll find the percentage who regularly use
multiple languages is fairly low, let alone evaluating each
one for each job.
I think it depends on what type of developement we are talking
about. But I see a lot of fuzz about fullstack developers. Not
sure if that fuzz translates into something at scale, but
"full-stack" is at least something that is mentioned frequently.
It's a high percentage without CS bachelors in most subfields of
programming. As for "full stack," a meaningless term which I bet
actually has less CS bachelors than the percentage I gave. ;)
Anyway, it is my impression that many C/C++ programmers also
know Python and also have a good understanding of basic
functional programming.
So two tools in the toolbox is enough?
Not sure what you mean by that. I meant to say that my
impression is that most C/C++ programmers need a higher level
language and also are capable of using other paradigms than
what C/C++ encourages. Despite C++ being able to express a lot
of the same things and also despite C++ being a language where
you never really reach a full deep understanding of the
language.
It's pretty simple what I mean: you were responding to my point
that most don't really pick the best tool for the job, but have a
single language that they try to hammer every nail with. Saying
that most C++ programmers also use python implies that having two
tools that you choose from is enough. In that case, you're
basically agreeing with me, despite your previous statements
otherwise, as I was saying we can't expect most programmers to
learn more than one tool, ie a single language.
Your company is much more likely to bring in somebody with
Java experience to write the Android portion.
Mostly because of the iOS/Android frameworks, not really
because of the languages.
That's why I included such knowledge of the needed frameworks in
knowing a language platform earlier, as realistically it can be
as important to getting the job done.
Or rather, the Java language shouldn't be the stumbling block,
but both of iOS and Android are rather bloated frameworks that
takes time getting into. Which I think it is intentional. Both
Apple and Google want developers to be dedicated experts on
their platform and seems to deliberately go for changes that
prevent cross platform tooling.
Could be, but that changes nothing about the reality that most
programmers are just going to pick one language and some set of
frameworks that are commonly used with it.
It is unrealistic to expect the vast majority of programmers
to do any more than use one language most of the time.
I don't know. Depends on what kind of development we are
talking about.
That is the current reality, it doesn't matter what hypothetical
kind of development you have in mind.
This actually argues for a single language: you're going to
spend a ton of time tracking all those shifting frameworks so
you won't have time for a new language too, but at least you
won't have to learn a new language every time you pick up the
new js framework of the day.
I think there is another way, but it isn't available yet.
Program transliteration and software synthesis should over time
be able to offset some of these issues.
Most imperative languages are fairly similar. Most of the code
we write, whether it is in Python, C+ or D would have a fairly
similar structure. In some sections you get something very
different, but I don't think that is dominating.
Yes, that is part of the plan with betterC, to make it easy to
translate C code to D.
The ongoing churn may help new languages with new users and
companies, don't think it helps with users who already know a
language well.
I don't know. Seems that many in these forums have done work in
Java, Go, Python, Rust and C++.
D users are the exception that prove the rule, the much larger
majority not using D because they're already entrenched in their
language. That's because, unlike Go, D offers many more features
than other languages, so it particularly appeals to such advanced
users from other languages.
Seems like an oxymoron, tech changes so fast that I don't see
how anything could be timeless, even if you really mean "will
still be the same 20 years from now." ;)
Right, but digital computing is a relatively new invention (and
well, even electricity is relatively new ;-). Over time one
would think that something "timeless" would establish itself.
But for now we can just say "stable".
There clearly are some frameworks that have been relatively
stable. Like matlab. I think that is because matlab has tried
to closely model the domain that scientists have been trained
in (linear algebra). But it is interesting that Python is
making inroads there. That matlab is now perceived as not
having good enough abstraction mechanisms, perhaps.
On the other hand, the mathematical field of logic is also
relatively new as it is conceptualized today, and some people
are exploring paradigms such as probabilistic programming
languages and what not… So right, "timeless" is not realistic
at the moment as the basic foundation is still quite new and we
are still learning how to make computers reason about first
order logic… (building automatic theorem provers).
I don't think such stability will ever happen, because unlike
electricity distribution or other older tech, software is
infinitely malleable. We're always going to keep stretching and
twisting it in new ways, as we get more used to its plasticity.
We will do a better job of securing and developing it, but we're
always going to keep changing it.
There's always new stuff other than that, eg more limited
mobile hardware over the last decade has returned the tech
market to earlier times, and native languages like Obj-C and
Swift have benefited.
Yeah, as you have pointed out many times, mobile CPUs are
quickly catching up at the high end and also to some extent on
the middle-end. What remains to be seen is how the mass-market
low end picks up. I think companies like Motorola is pushing
the curve at the low/middle phone market as Samsung and Apple
have taken the high end.
Sure, so you _could_ now run python on those newly powerful
mobile CPUs, but Objective-C and Swift have used that decade when
you _couldn't_ to entrench themselves in that market. And as
I've pointed out to you before, they're still much more
efficient, so until battery tech get much better, you're going to
want to stick with those natively-compiled languages.
Python has done well in those niches, but when is the last
time you saw a popular GUI app written in Python?
Many applications use Python (or Lua or Java or even Visual
Basic) to tie the pieces together, including the GUI, but they
use engines written in other languages for interfacing with the
OS.
Which of those python-glued GUI apps has become popular? That
was the question: I can find toy apps in any language, that
nobody uses.
Even Java got nowhere in the consumer GUI market, other than a
few p2p apps like Vuze and the now-defunct Limewire, largely
for piracy.
JetBrain's products?
I wouldn't call developer tools consumer apps, as they're used by
developers to do their job, so that doesn't really qualify. I
should also note that I meant consumer desktop GUI apps, as
obviously Java does well on mobile, when it was made the default
application language for Android, though they've paid the price
for its inefficiency and lag and had to AoT-compile it starting
with Lollipop.
While that market may be important to you, it is a small
segment of the programming market. It's nice that D libraries
like Mir are targeting it, but it's not going to move the
needle much.
Mmm… it is a small segment of the revenue-based market, because
scientific programmers are often the scientists themselves (no
it is not important to me at the moment). It is a fairly large
segment though of the overall market. As it includes a lot of
engineering. Just because those programs aren't sold, either
because they are in-house, personal or with a very narrow user
base (like researchers) doesn't mean that these programs are
less important.
I don't think it's a large percentage of programmers or programs
either, leaving aside revenue. It used to be a significant chunk
decades ago, but I believe it has dwindled to a small percentage
as computing has spread everywhere else.
You may not even know that's because of generic programming,
you just like all the great libraries. IOW, you may think you
don't need generic programming, but the libraries you do need
do need it.
That's right, but you need critical mass for it to matter.
I've given you an estimate of D users, you haven't said why that
hasn't passed your critical mass threshold.
Otherwise people will just use somewhat slower or somewhat more
clunky libraries. Go, Python and JavaScript are doing fine…
without proper generics.
As I noted in an earlier thread in this forum, I can build a bike
in a couple hours and get going faster out of the gate up to a
top speed of 30 km/h. However, the guy building his own car will
take longer but eventually zoom by me at 150 km/h.
Those languages got farther earlier, but that's no guarantee they
win the race.
On Thursday, 4 January 2018 at 07:51:56 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 16:20:48 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 11:43:35 UTC, Paulo Pinto
wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 11:13:04 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 10:29:05 UTC, Ola Fosheim
Grøstad wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 09:56:48 UTC, Pjotr Prins
wrote:
[...]
Good programmers aren't stuck on any single language and
will pick the tool best suited for the job at hand. Good
programmers are also good at picking up new languages.
And who do you know who does this? While I myself have
espoused the idea of the best tool for the job in this
forum, realistically, other than a small handful of coders,
when does that ever happen?
[...]
Everyone at my employer, a few thousand of them doing
enterprise consulting.
We specialize in a few large domains, and tend to jump
between them every 6 months or a year, when switching
projects.
On my case, full stack development across JVM and .NET
languages, with C++ for low level coding.
How many of those few thousand are actually comfortable with
C++ for low-level coding? I think you've said before that
it's not many. So okay, your colleagues switch between Java
and C#, which is somewhat uncommon as many places are pure C#
or Java shops, but those are the two most popular enterprise
application languages, noted for their similarities.
You can hardly use this as an example of having a toolbox of
languages and picking the best for the job, say Erlang for
some high-concurrency microservice or ruby for an app you need
to get up and running quickly. You're just using two of the
most popular business languages and deciding which based on
what the customer wants.
Not all of them of them are comfortable with C++, that is true.
But they are comfortable with other languages, which I am not.
Notice that "JVM and .NET languages, with C++ for low level
coding." was my own skillset, not everyone at the company.
Also I said JVM and .NET languages, not Java and C#. If you
want me to be more precise, Java, Clojure, C#, F#, VB.NET and
now getting into Kotlin due to future Android projects.
I also do JavaScript, PL/SQL, pgSQL on occasion, and have
helped some iOS projects when an extra helping hand is needed
and I am low on project requests.
I never like to specialize in any technology stack, it is the
best way to outdate myself on a market that is fashion driven.
I suspect you are one of the small handful I mentioned, even in
your company, who's comfortable with so many languages.
Of course there are lots of details I don't master in every
programming language, but as Wirth puts it, it is all about
mastering CS concepts, algorithms and data structures. Also why
Knuth used his own invented Assembly instead of choosing any
programming language.
To actually know every detail of programming language, or what
its runtime library is capable of, there are books and web
sites to get it from.
Soft skills and domain knowledge in each market are more
relevant than knowing every single detail of a programming
language.
I suspect that is what most at even your company do: focus on a
single language, much more of its details, and all those non-CS
skills you say are more important. Which is fine, that has been
the natural order of things, a few generalists like you
interacting with a bunch of specialists.
On Thursday, 4 January 2018 at 13:07:37 UTC, Mengu wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 16:20:48 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 11:43:35 UTC, Paulo Pinto
wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 11:13:04 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 10:29:05 UTC, Ola Fosheim
Grøstad wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 09:56:48 UTC, Pjotr Prins
wrote:
[...]
I perceived that there was a lot of hype around Python 15
years ago or so. Now, universities are replacing Java with
Python as the introduction language and Python is also
becoming the defacto language for scientific programming.
Python is basically getting critical mass and is now managing
to take on Matlab and perhaps to some extent even
C++/Fortran.
Python has done well in those niches, but when is the last
time you saw a popular GUI app written in Python? That is the
largest segment of the market, and Python has basically no
uptake there. Even Java got nowhere in the consumer GUI
market, other than a few p2p apps like Vuze and the
now-defunct Limewire, largely for piracy.
you could not be more wrong. there are tons of python gui
applications. pygtk, pyqt and wxpython are great libraries that
allows you to create desktop apps very easy and fast. D does
not even have a good solution except for gtkD which is a one
man show. if it wasn't for Mike we would not even have it.
leadership does not care. remember qtd guys stopping everything
because a bug was not getting fixed?
Maybe I am, but you have not named a popular python GUI app like
I asked, only some GUI frameworks that could be used to build
such an app. I wasn't saying that you couldn't write a python
GUI app, but that it's probably not the best tool for the job.
there's also one other thing: atom, vs code, spotify, slack are
all running on electron. does it make it a better platform than
python?
No, because it's still a bad framework, as posts like this show:
https://medium.com/@caspervonb/why-i-still-use-vim-67afd76b4db6
But at least they can show some real-world successes for app
usage, even if they perform poorly because of the fundamental
limitations of the language. I don't think python has even
gotten that far.
