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Programming in the Mid-Future

88 replies on 6 pages. Most recent reply: Apr 11, 2010 5:47 PM by Charles McKnight

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Nemanja Trifunovic

Posts: 172
Nickname: ntrif
Registered: Jun, 2004

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 1:22 PM
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>the
> most active and popular languages (Java, C# and C++) are
> all statically typed and DTL continue to occupy a niche,

Even these are not static enough for my taste. Something like Ada or ML would be even better. As for DTL, I would never even consider them for anything non-trivial, but to each their own...

Roger Turnau

Posts: 4
Nickname: 70060
Registered: Jan, 2010

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 1:48 PM
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There is a significant and growing class of programming problems that static languages can't solve.

Such as what? You can't make such a provocative claim and then hand-wave your way past it. Give at least one example.

And then explain to me exactly why Haskell, which has a ridiculously strong typing system, can't solve it.

Mike Ivanov

Posts: 23
Nickname: mikeivanov
Registered: Jul, 2007

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 6:35 PM
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Cedric,

> we're talking about Turing complete languages

BF is a Turing complete language, yet it is not practically usable for anything beyond printing "Hello, world!"

The same story is with static languages: there is a growing set of problems where they are extremely ineffective.

robert young

Posts: 361
Nickname: funbunny
Registered: Sep, 2003

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 6:35 PM
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> ACID compliance provides certain meanings, and comes with
> certain costs. Eventual consistency provides a different
> set of meanings, and comes with lower costs.

Eventual consistency will prove to be lethal. There is no way around consistency, it is absolute. Those who deny 40 years of research and implementation of (relational) databases will end up making messes that make the recent Wall Street cockup look like a tea party.

Cedric Beust

Posts: 140
Nickname: cbeust
Registered: Feb, 2004

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 6:45 PM
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Hi Mike,

> The same story is with static languages: there is a
> growing set of problems where they are extremely
> ineffective.

[citation needed]

:-)

Mike Ivanov

Posts: 23
Nickname: mikeivanov
Registered: Jul, 2007

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 6:47 PM
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> why Haskell, which has a ridiculously strong
> typing system, can't solve it.

Haskell Curry died almost 30 years ago, he can't solve problems anymore.

As about Haskell programming language -- it can't solve problems either because it can't think, regardless of how ridiculous its type system is.

Problems are solved by alive (and sane) people, not by programming languages. Now, would *you* dare to choose Haskell as a main tool for a 50+ developer team?

Mike Ivanov

Posts: 23
Nickname: mikeivanov
Registered: Jul, 2007

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 6:53 PM
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[citation needed]

Can you help me remember just any [notable] C++ web framework? ;-)

Timothy Brownawell

Posts: 25
Nickname: tbrownaw
Registered: Mar, 2009

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 7:08 PM
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> [citation needed]
>
> Can you help me remember just any [notable] C++ web
> framework? ;-)

I ran across a reference to this fairly recently: http://code.google.com/p/madfish-webtoolkit/
Also I believe there is one by the GNU people, and all the ones listed here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1252201/any-good-c-c-web-toolkit

Cedric Beust

Posts: 140
Nickname: cbeust
Registered: Feb, 2004

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 7:08 PM
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> [citation needed]
>
> Can you help me remember just any [notable] C++ web
> framework? ;-)

As a matter of fact, I work with one such web server on a daily basis and the number of queries it serves every day is nothing short of staggering [1]

But we were talking about languages, not products, so you still haven't told us why you think that C++ is intrinsically a worse language to write a web server in than a dynamically typed language?

--
Cedric


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Server

Timothy Brownawell

Posts: 25
Nickname: tbrownaw
Registered: Mar, 2009

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 7:12 PM
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Also consider ASP.NET / ASP.NET MVC which seem to default to using C# and whatever the java frameworks are (is it still .jsp or have those been superseded by something new?). C# and java count as static languages, right?

Mike Ivanov

Posts: 23
Nickname: mikeivanov
Registered: Jul, 2007

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 7:12 PM
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> Stupidly parallel objects

Is it like actors? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#Programming_with_Actors)

If so, the Io language is pretty much there.

Mike Ivanov

Posts: 23
Nickname: mikeivanov
Registered: Jul, 2007

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 7:16 PM
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> with one such web server

Web server != web framework.

Is there anything like Django or RoR for C++? For Java (yes, I know about Groovy, it's a different language)?

Mike Ivanov

Posts: 23
Nickname: mikeivanov
Registered: Jul, 2007

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 7:23 PM
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> why you think that C++ is intrinsically a worse language

I never said C++ is worse to write a web server than, say, Python. C++ is a worse language than C in this aspect.

But C++ is a bad language for web frameworks simply because of its development cycle, which is tweak/compile/link/deploy/refresh instead of tweak/refresh, which makes it less suitable for solving quite a wide class of tasks. This is just one reason.

Cedric Beust

Posts: 140
Nickname: cbeust
Registered: Feb, 2004

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 7:24 PM
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Sorry but I still fail to see how counting the number of web servers/frameworks written in C++ is even relevant to the question at hand, which was:

"There is a significant and growing class of programming problems that static languages can't solve."

Obviously C++ can solve the web server/framework problem.

So, can you (Bruce, actually) show an example of a problem that can't be solved in a statically typed language but can be solved in a dynamically typed one?

--
Cedric

Timothy Brownawell

Posts: 25
Nickname: tbrownaw
Registered: Mar, 2009

Re: Programming in the Mid-Future Posted: Mar 11, 2010 7:38 PM
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> But C++ is a bad language for web frameworks simply
> because of its development cycle, which is
> tweak/compile/link/deploy/refresh instead of
> tweak/refresh, which makes it less suitable for solving
> quite a wide class of tasks. This is just one reason.

...wtf?

Do you seriously mean to say that development time is dominated by typing "make" rather than, say, thinking about how to test for bugs, thinking about how to track down observed bugs, and thinking about how to map what you want to accomplish onto the language?

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