What's a "real" programming language?
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I already know .NET I don't need to expend effort learning it. I was on the Visual Studio development team at Microsoft back when they rolled out C#. I've used it ever since. I'm covering my bases, making sure I have a broad understanding of relevant technologies used in software these days. However you feel about it, node.js is part of that milieu today. Your opinions or mine about how solid it is are not relevant to the fact that it is being used. That can be bitter pill to swallow, but remaining relevant and not holy rolling yourself into a corner sort of requires it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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I'm covering my bases, making sure I have a broad understanding of relevant technologies used in software these days
That is as good of a reason as any and makes good sense. I haven't had to learn JavaScript (to the depth of using it like you do when needed). So far, I have found plenty of work where C# (server app development, cloud development, web development with Blazor) is required, combined with experience in Azure native development. Converting JavaScript to C# (coding and architecture) is about as far as I have gone. If getting and keeping a job required me to learn JavaScript and using node.js, then I would do so. I have been fortunate so far. I know what the relevant technologies are, but I have been fortunate to be able to pick and choose which ones I work in. I applaud your flexibility with the projects you choose.
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As I recall, node.js is a google project, not a community project. Maybe I'm wrong. But nodejs is probably the biggest single offender here, in terms of technology.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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As I recall, node.js is a google project, not a community project.
[Wikipedia article on Node.js](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js) "Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source JavaScript runtime environment that can run on Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and more. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript engine, and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser." Interestingly, Ryan Dahl, who created node.js, also created the TypeScript engine.
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jschell wrote:
exclude C#, Java, JavaScript.
Essentially correct. Can the Java VM or C# runtime (and .net framework) be implemented those languages? I doubt it. Yet, as to C# and Java, I'm not sure that they are excluded by definition. Certainly their reference implementations rely on Virtual Machines and runtimes, but I'm not ready to say that their core functionality require those. I reserve the notion that maybe someone could use one or the other to implement a proper compiler which supports some core functionality of the language without needing the full VM/runtime -- such would probably not be able to inter-operate with "normal" applications. I don't know Java, but C#'s core functionality/syntax shouldn't need it. As to C++, I'm not even sure about that. Or, for the most part, any object-oriented language. I think D is implemented in D.
jschell wrote:
it is a two step process
jschell wrote:
C/C++ 'built' using a compiler and then a linker
jschell wrote:
there are still two steps.
I see a statement on another site [ "C++ implementation" means the compiler plus linker plus standard libraries ] and I would respond, "no, forget about any reference implementation and 'standard libraries', look only at the core of the syntax, what is the minimum you require to implement that? Without having to link to the library and such, you don't need a linker. Consider how the first version of the C compiler and library must have been compiled prior to the libraries having been compiled. I know, not very useful, but that's not the point. Consider only the syntax of the language itself, and not any of the baggage you have come to expect to go with it. Surely someone can (has the ability to) take the language syntax and implement a whole new eco-system which does not require the VM or runtime or 'standard libraries' or whatever. Not that I could implement such a thing myself. Codewitch could probably knock one out in a week. The linker and pre-compiled assemblies are just nice-to-haves.
jschell wrote:
Definitely a compiled language
Just being a compiled language isn't enough. I would further assert that basically no programming language is inherently "compiled" or "in
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
be implemented those languages? ... look only at the core of the syntax,
Then I believe my answer would be yes. The standard java compiler is written entirely in Java. It emits class files. Programmatically it could emit assembler. Not sure how C# does it but pretty sure process is doable. I don't know the details of JavaScript enough to know what is included. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible.
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
though BASIC is the only one I can think of quickly which has had successful implementations of both types.
I believe I remember seeing a C interpreter long ago. Before a lot of the new stuff was added.
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
so are they truly compiled or just interpreted?
Now days I suspect the distinction is meaningless. Certainly doesn't mean much to me because I know how compilers work and because they all emit something, the something is not as important in terms of a discussion like this. Looking it up apparently Lisp in 1952 was an interpreter.
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
though BASIC is the only one I
That might be a distinction, since often with BASIC, one didn't 'compile' it but rather just 'ran' it. It compiled and then ran all at one go. So there never was a binary type file. However I know that internally it was still distinct processes (compile, emitted code, then run the emitted code.) Perl is the same. I had the misfortune to work on a system which did NOT compile the language to any intermediate form. This was when I first learned how languages should work. In that system it would run lines by parsing them. So a for loop would reparse the for line every time the loop executed.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote:
C# and Java "compile" to some intermediate form which runs on a VM/runtime, so are they truly compiled or just interpreted? Probably the latter.
There is no technical reason why one could not build hardware which has the Java bytecode as its machine language. Ditto for C#. Therefore, neither language is inherently interpreted.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Can the Java VM or C# runtime (and .net framework) be implemented those languages? I doubt it.
C# supports .NET native compilation (since VS 2015), so you can compile C# in Visual Studio to machine code. Someone more proficient in Java could answer whether Java can be compiled to machine language. Also, C# is always run compiled to machine language. C# compiles to Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL), and the .NET VM then performs its "Just in Time", or JIT, to machine language when it is run, based on the specific environment in which it is run. The Java VM does something similar, so both do produce machine language differently and more efficiently than an interpreter would.
MSBassSinger wrote:
so you can compile C# in Visual Studio to machine code
How does it link?
MSBassSinger wrote:
Also, C# is always run compiled to machine language. C# compiles to Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL)
Java does the same. That however is not really applicable to this discussion.
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You used JavaScript, a crappy language if there ever was one, and you are surprised at its limitations... :doh:
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
Steve Naidamast wrote:
a crappy language if there ever was one
You need to get out more? There are a vast number of languages. Many of them very annoying. The 'standard' for SQL comes to mind. SQL, as per the standard, is not even Turing complete. But actual implementations are. The successful ones always have stuff bolted on. That is the nature of progress. But consider one of the odd ball ones that I was reminded of recently is 'Erlang'. Doesn't even rate a percentage in Tiobe index. Yet I just found out that someone decided to build another language (Elixir) on top of that one. And someone decided to build an entire business around the usage of that (which is why I even heard of it.)
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From what I understand, the international standards community has not even had the language cleaned of its "dead code", making it more bloated than it has to be...
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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If you can build a Turing machine out of arrangements of electron charges (which you obviously can), then I would claim that it meets my definition of computer language. We don't usually think of that as a language, but it is no more arbitrary than using certain shapes to represent letters is.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Not sure, but you answer with irony? But what I have in my mind is the next step from compiler-compiler
0x01AA wrote:
long dreamed of a universal 'meta language'
It cannot exist. That is why so many languages exist. Reasons vary but in general a need was not being met or the newer one was supposed to be better. If anything you can look to the many languages that use the Java VM and yet they are not Java. That is not the only language platform where other languages were built on it.
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As I recall, node.js is a google project, not a community project.
[Wikipedia article on Node.js](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js) "Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source JavaScript runtime environment that can run on Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and more. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript engine, and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser." Interestingly, Ryan Dahl, who created node.js, also created the TypeScript engine.
I realize it's open source as many google projects are, but I think google funds it and google staffers are primary contributors.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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As I recall, node.js is a google project, not a community project.
[Wikipedia article on Node.js](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js) "Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source JavaScript runtime environment that can run on Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and more. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript engine, and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser." Interestingly, Ryan Dahl, who created node.js, also created the TypeScript engine.
Digging further, it looks like I could be mistaken about Google's involvement. It looks like it gets a significant amount of it's support from the Linux Foundation, which also supports some other projects like zephyrproject that i use. OpenJS Foundation - Wikipedia[^] I'd say this counts as industry rather than community in any case, as LF is a major influencer in the direction of a lot of software technology these days.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Steve Naidamast wrote:
a crappy language if there ever was one
You need to get out more? There are a vast number of languages. Many of them very annoying. The 'standard' for SQL comes to mind. SQL, as per the standard, is not even Turing complete. But actual implementations are. The successful ones always have stuff bolted on. That is the nature of progress. But consider one of the odd ball ones that I was reminded of recently is 'Erlang'. Doesn't even rate a percentage in Tiobe index. Yet I just found out that someone decided to build another language (Elixir) on top of that one. And someone decided to build an entire business around the usage of that (which is why I even heard of it.)
I have done a ton of JavaScript in my very long career... I never liked it and never will... JavaScript was never designed for what it is being used for now. And the only reason people use it is because it is free and is part of the inherent infrastructure of web applications. This still doesn't mean that it is good language due to its popularity. And languages that continually have things "bolted" on them become bloated and sometimes even unusable. This pushes developers to find cleaner languages...
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I'm covering my bases, making sure I have a broad understanding of relevant technologies used in software these days
That is as good of a reason as any and makes good sense. I haven't had to learn JavaScript (to the depth of using it like you do when needed). So far, I have found plenty of work where C# (server app development, cloud development, web development with Blazor) is required, combined with experience in Azure native development. Converting JavaScript to C# (coding and architecture) is about as far as I have gone. If getting and keeping a job required me to learn JavaScript and using node.js, then I would do so. I have been fortunate so far. I know what the relevant technologies are, but I have been fortunate to be able to pick and choose which ones I work in. I applaud your flexibility with the projects you choose.
I probably won't end up taking a job doing web development as a primary thing, but I could see being drafted to develop a companion app to some embedded widget using Flutter or something. This not only keeps me in the loop, but it keeps me from getting rusty in general.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Bear with me, because as much as I am loath to holy roll about technology, I still have my peeves. I went about porting my DFA lexer engine from C# to TypeScript. It was primarily an exercise in teaching myself TypeScript, plus brushing up on my JS. So I implement the bones of it, and after adjusting my mental map to the JS way of doing things I got it mostly working. Then I went about trying to use a Map keyed by Sets. Turns out JS Map and Set will only compare by value for "scalar" types (presumably including strings) or otherwise it uses reference comparisons. You can't override your own equality mechanism either. how to customize object equality for javascript set - Stack Overflow[^] Consequently, there is no performant way to do subset construction to convert an NFA to a DFA in this language. I've seen others solve this problem by using string keys, but this falls down for machines of non-trivial size. Regex FA visualizer[^] is one example but I can basically crash it or stall it out for a long time at least with any non-trivial expression. This one also doesn't work properly besides, but I have no other link handy for you to try. This may be academic, but it is also basic computer science. A language should be able to allow you to implement computer sciencey algorithms and constructs - especially those that have been adapted to countless other programming languages. DFA by subset construction is basic. And you can't do it in JS. I can't even begin to imagine what LALR table generation would look like. You may be wondering why do I care? Because node.js. Because Angular Because React-Native it's not just for web front ends anymore. JS is an almost virulent technology these days. It needs to be, if not Turing complete at least cover the fundamentals, or you're just spreading garbage around. Without a way to do custom comparisons at the very least on hashed containers, your language isn't going to be able to do a lot of things other high level languages can accomplish handily. Is it even a "real" language? Is it ready for primetime, or is it just being adopted because we can? :~
honey the codewitch wrote:
it's not just for web front ends anymore. JS is an almost virulent technology these days. It needs to be
That is only people carrying around their golden hammer. It's nothing to do with it being "good" or "suited" and they do not care. It's being what web people know and by virtue of the explosion of the internet, web people putting up the numbers. Except it was always and only ever will be a lead hammer which we never really should've created to begin with. It's been literally a tyranny of the majority sort of situation now for many years where we must all agree to scratch our itches with angle grinders as a matter of populism.
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I have done a ton of JavaScript in my very long career... I never liked it and never will... JavaScript was never designed for what it is being used for now. And the only reason people use it is because it is free and is part of the inherent infrastructure of web applications. This still doesn't mean that it is good language due to its popularity. And languages that continually have things "bolted" on them become bloated and sometimes even unusable. This pushes developers to find cleaner languages...
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
Steve Naidamast wrote:
This still doesn't mean that it is good language due to its popularity.
So what is the alternative that is good?
Steve Naidamast wrote:
And languages that continually have things "bolted" on them become bloated and sometimes even unusable.
Unusable? I haven't seen that.
Steve Naidamast wrote:
This pushes developers to find cleaner languages
Never seen anyone claim that. Certainly seen people choose tech stacks because they liked it. Certainly seen people use another language just because they wanted to. Certainly seen people use another tech because they could not figure out how to use the existing tech. Seen a tech stack used because the owners son recommended switching. I have only seen one objective decision made about a tech stack and that was a business, not technical, reason. That was because the company that owned the tech stack gave the target company (as a startup) quite a bit of money.
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Steve Naidamast wrote:
This still doesn't mean that it is good language due to its popularity.
So what is the alternative that is good?
Steve Naidamast wrote:
And languages that continually have things "bolted" on them become bloated and sometimes even unusable.
Unusable? I haven't seen that.
Steve Naidamast wrote:
This pushes developers to find cleaner languages
Never seen anyone claim that. Certainly seen people choose tech stacks because they liked it. Certainly seen people use another language just because they wanted to. Certainly seen people use another tech because they could not figure out how to use the existing tech. Seen a tech stack used because the owners son recommended switching. I have only seen one objective decision made about a tech stack and that was a business, not technical, reason. That was because the company that owned the tech stack gave the target company (as a startup) quite a bit of money.
Why do you think C# has become so popular when compared to Java?
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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PIEBALDconsult wrote:
C# and Java "compile" to some intermediate form which runs on a VM/runtime, so are they truly compiled or just interpreted? Probably the latter.
There is no technical reason why one could not build hardware which has the Java bytecode as its machine language. Ditto for C#. Therefore, neither language is inherently interpreted.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
Daniel Pfeffer wrote:
There is no technical reason why one could not build hardware which has the Java bytecode as its machine language. Ditto for C#.
If you with C# mean to refer to dotNET Intermediate Language (IL), you are comparing two languages at approximately the same abstraction level, but very different in form. Java bytecode, like lots of other P-code formats (strongly inspired by the P4 code of the original ETH Pascal compiler) are intended to be complete, ready for execution, with no loose ends (except for those defined by the language to be, e.g. late binding), similar to 'real' binary machine code - but for a virtual machine. The instructions (i.e. bytecodes) are executed one by one, independent of each other. IL, on the other hand, has a lot of loose ends that must be tied up before execution. It contains lots of metadata that are not the machine instructions, but indicates how instructions should be generated. Although you in principle could try to 'interpret' the IL, you would have to construct fairly large runtime data structures to know how to generate the interpretation, similar to those structures built by the jitter to compile the IL to machine code. So you are really doing the full compilation, except that you are sending binary instructions to the execution unit rather than to the executable image. The line between compilaton (followed by execution) and interpretation is fuzzy. If you with C# refer to direct source code interpretation, you have a huge task to solve. Here, you would have to build a lot more complex runtime data structures to support the interpreter. Building these would be going a long way to making a full parse tree of the source code, and then you have done a significant part of the compilation job. Compilers are so fast nowadays that I see no practical advantages in interpreting program code. For building dedicated hardware: USCD Pascal, one of the better known Pascal interpreters for PCs, used the P4 bytecode. It also ran on the PDP-11, such as the single-chip LSI-11. For this was written microcode to run P4 directly (rather than PDP-11 instruction set). It turned out to be significantly slower than running the PDP-11 software interpreter. There are lots of similar stories of hardware implementations not living up to expectations. Intel's object oriented CPU, the 432, was simulated on an 8086. The first 432 implementation turned out to be slower than the simul
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Don't get me started on imaginary languages. :~
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Bear with me, because as much as I am loath to holy roll about technology, I still have my peeves. I went about porting my DFA lexer engine from C# to TypeScript. It was primarily an exercise in teaching myself TypeScript, plus brushing up on my JS. So I implement the bones of it, and after adjusting my mental map to the JS way of doing things I got it mostly working. Then I went about trying to use a Map keyed by Sets. Turns out JS Map and Set will only compare by value for "scalar" types (presumably including strings) or otherwise it uses reference comparisons. You can't override your own equality mechanism either. how to customize object equality for javascript set - Stack Overflow[^] Consequently, there is no performant way to do subset construction to convert an NFA to a DFA in this language. I've seen others solve this problem by using string keys, but this falls down for machines of non-trivial size. Regex FA visualizer[^] is one example but I can basically crash it or stall it out for a long time at least with any non-trivial expression. This one also doesn't work properly besides, but I have no other link handy for you to try. This may be academic, but it is also basic computer science. A language should be able to allow you to implement computer sciencey algorithms and constructs - especially those that have been adapted to countless other programming languages. DFA by subset construction is basic. And you can't do it in JS. I can't even begin to imagine what LALR table generation would look like. You may be wondering why do I care? Because node.js. Because Angular Because React-Native it's not just for web front ends anymore. JS is an almost virulent technology these days. It needs to be, if not Turing complete at least cover the fundamentals, or you're just spreading garbage around. Without a way to do custom comparisons at the very least on hashed containers, your language isn't going to be able to do a lot of things other high level languages can accomplish handily. Is it even a "real" language? Is it ready for primetime, or is it just being adopted because we can? :~
Any language in which you can write working software is a real programming language. Each and every has its limitations. Although JS is being used in way too many situations, for which it was not well designed. I always thought that it should have been deprecated around 2007 for something more well designed or at least limited to client side basic UI code.
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Bear with me, because as much as I am loath to holy roll about technology, I still have my peeves. I went about porting my DFA lexer engine from C# to TypeScript. It was primarily an exercise in teaching myself TypeScript, plus brushing up on my JS. So I implement the bones of it, and after adjusting my mental map to the JS way of doing things I got it mostly working. Then I went about trying to use a Map keyed by Sets. Turns out JS Map and Set will only compare by value for "scalar" types (presumably including strings) or otherwise it uses reference comparisons. You can't override your own equality mechanism either. how to customize object equality for javascript set - Stack Overflow[^] Consequently, there is no performant way to do subset construction to convert an NFA to a DFA in this language. I've seen others solve this problem by using string keys, but this falls down for machines of non-trivial size. Regex FA visualizer[^] is one example but I can basically crash it or stall it out for a long time at least with any non-trivial expression. This one also doesn't work properly besides, but I have no other link handy for you to try. This may be academic, but it is also basic computer science. A language should be able to allow you to implement computer sciencey algorithms and constructs - especially those that have been adapted to countless other programming languages. DFA by subset construction is basic. And you can't do it in JS. I can't even begin to imagine what LALR table generation would look like. You may be wondering why do I care? Because node.js. Because Angular Because React-Native it's not just for web front ends anymore. JS is an almost virulent technology these days. It needs to be, if not Turing complete at least cover the fundamentals, or you're just spreading garbage around. Without a way to do custom comparisons at the very least on hashed containers, your language isn't going to be able to do a lot of things other high level languages can accomplish handily. Is it even a "real" language? Is it ready for primetime, or is it just being adopted because we can? :~
I'm not sure I could define a "real" programming language, but if I could, JS would fail to meet the definition. Not declaring variables coupled with case-sensitivity was enough for me to loathe the stuff.