Show HN: Ki Programming Language(github.com) Alpha preview for the ki programming language. Currently linux-x64, macos-x64 only. Windows users can use WSL for now. Feedback is much appreciated. |
Show HN: Ki Programming Language(github.com) Alpha preview for the ki programming language. Currently linux-x64, macos-x64 only. Windows users can use WSL for now. Feedback is much appreciated. |
Skimmed through the docs. On the first look, the syntax seems to be a blend of Go and Rust.
Was confused by this sentence [0], perhaps some additional explanation/code example could help:
When a value has ownership, it can be stored and used anywhere. But you can only store it in one place.
1) concurrency support
2) memory management techniques
As those are the most interesting aspects of any C-like language to me.
Good luck!
Python, Racket and a few others do this really well. Even on the GitHub a simple short but significant enough code snippet would do wonders.
Maybe the syntax is exactly what I expect and I'll have more interest, or maybe its way off and I don't want to bother. Whatever the case, put some sample code up front and center.
https://ki-lang.dev/docs/dev/intro
For a more indept view of the language you will have to see the docs. An overview might not be bad indeed.
Using the readme as a landing page kitchensink is a GitHubism.
public MyClass Students { get; set; }
You will need to create a new object before you leave the class or you will get an error. Or, you can use MyClass? instead, and it will give warnings any time you try to use Students without checking for null first. This is done before compiling so you can check for these null references through the IDE. This is a big change for C# and can effectively eliminate null references (object reference not set to an instance of an object) exceptions throughout your application.
You can do some gymnastics like various types of deferrals to amortise the cost, but now you're getting into more sophisticated tracing-like runtime behaviour which has it's own unpredictability.
There's no free lunch. Better static analysis that can aggregate various allocation into arenas/regions seems like the only way to make this trade-off better.
PL circles: reference counting is also “garbage collection”
Would recommend removing the "Other" comparison as pretty much anything that can be said there is wildly inaccurate. Would also like to see comparison with Zig as it seems to have similar goals.
Because we only allow you to store values with ownership inside other objects, you cannot have a circular reference. It uses reference counting to know if something needs to be freed or not. But because we keep track of ownership and moved values we are able to run an algorithm that removes most of these counts.
Can we please knock it off with reinventing different ways to declare a variable? This also irritates me about Rust. There’s nothing wrong with having syntax that looks like languages that have existed before. How about
[modifiers] [type] [variable name] = [initial value];
What I want in a programming language is not arbitrary new grammars, I want drop-in improvements to languages that already exist. C++ but with better dependency management. Python but statically typed (Mojo where you at?). PHP but standardize all the weirdness.
(Some or all of these rants could be out of date as my knowledge cutoff for languages ends at various times in the last 15 years.)
I don't like `let` because it's an extra four characters every time. But the
[variable name]: [modifiers] [type] = [initial value];
> Rust: Rust right now might be the best language out there right now. It's hard for us to criticize them because we lack the experience of building big rust projects. We do however think rust has a really slow compiler. We also think that rust might be too idealistic where it restricts the developer too much.
> C: C is obviously the best but... we dont always want to manage our own memory. Also their std-lib lacks alot of basic functions. You are forced to work with makefiles or similar build tools and most of those tools are very badly designed.
> C++: C++ is like a worse version of c. They do have the most features of any language, which allows the developers to write the greatest code and also the worst code. You let a developer work on a project for a year and suddenly you are looking at a codebase full of OOP, templates and the most hacky preprocessor logic you've ever seen. That developer says it's built using todays greatest standards, yet no one is able to understand the code at all. Sometimes you have to limit bad practices.
> Other: All other languages use garbage collection which makes them hard to use for millisecond realtime applications. Secondly, most languages allow you to have undefined behaviour.
I'm not sure if this section is really making the case you wanted to make. Either this needs to be rephrased or scrapped all together, it doesn't present the best foot forward because ideally you are recruiting people from these languages, and in your descriptions of them you make some very facile comparisons.
So compilation times are dominated by llvm so there won't be any significant improvement on compilation speed.
> Ki is a statically typed language. It's advantage over most languages is that you cannot have any undefined behaviour.
Java, C, C++ are statically typed. I understand it's not many languages, but they do represent a pretty large share of coders...
Docs need some polishing tough. The comparison to other languages doesn't make the point of Ki clear to me.
Also, error handling feels like black-box magic with all those exclamation and question marks sprinkled everywhere. Those symbols seem vaguely chosen.
!? provides an alternative value when the function errors
!! exits the current scope on an error, e.g. return,continue,exit,...
It doesnt seem that complex. Ofcourse, there is also '??' and '?!'. That might make it more difficult. It's not vague actually. if it starts with '!', it's a function error handler. if it starts with '?', it's a null-check.
The way to do it I think is to properly mentor / monitor juniors rather than tying up hands of experienced developers.
See this post [0] from 2019. Things don't seem to have got much better in recent years [1] [2] [3].
[0] https://xeiaso.net/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20230351
oh and, v-lang does have GC. they use boehm gc.
1) Uses GC as a convenient default and is optional (can be turned off with -gc none)
2) Can use autofree (enabled with -autofree)
3) Can use arena allocation (enabled with -prealloc)
4) Can be managed manually (-gc none)
Programming languages are for humans and machines. Machines do better with braces. (I've written lexers for both.)
Also, try to write an automatic formatter for a whitespace-delimited language; if your indentation is wrong, your logic is wrong, whereas with a brace language, if your indentation is wrong, you run a formatter, and it's all golden.
In a brace-based language, if your braces are wrong, your logic is wrong. How is that better? At least a mistake in indentation is much easier for a human to spot.
> They should have reached 1.0 by now...
These are strange statements. People having any familiarity with newer programming languages are likely to not know or be confused by where this is coming from.
V is a relatively new language that came out in 2019 and is in beta. So comparatively speaking, V has progressed well at the least, debatably quite fast. V also has more GitHub stars than all the listed below languages (in beta) combined (per OSS Github language rankings). Let's look at the starting dates for these popular and newer languages:
1) Zig came out in 2016 and is still in beta.
2) Odin came out in 2016 and is still in beta.
3) Jai started in 2014 (full time around 2017) and is still in beta.
4) Red came out in 2011 and is still in beta.
The languages that we see today, which are popular and at the top of the rankings (like TIOBE) are significantly to quite old. Among the youngest languages in the top 20 (your post mentions Rust and Go), they came out in 2015 (Rust), 2014 (Swift), and 2009 (Go). All of these have huge corporate support.
No, because C was derived from B. B was created in 1969 and was much of the basis of what would become C, which is given the release date of 1972. So we can make the argument of at least around 3 years of development, of what would be named C, before reaching a stable or usable enough state.
Languages and goals were much simpler in the past. Stages of development like alpha, beta, or what was 1.0 get kind of mixed up. It's not as clear a process, as we have today.
> Except for jai, because jblow has other things todo
Surely the other language creators had/have other things going on too. One of the main differences, that was attempting to clarify in the previous post, is that certain programming languages have huge corporate backing, which affects their development time. C (AT&T), Go (Google), Rust (Mozilla), and Swift (Apple) have reached 1.0 or stability faster, because of who they have supporting and pushing them.
Independent and more grassroots projects can sometimes achieve 1.0 in comparable times. But, this seems related to how exceptionally talented the lead developers are, experienced (as created other languages before), goals of the project (simpler is often easier), popularity, or how many contributors and sponsors got involved.
Crystal, looks to have took around 7 years to reach 1.0 (though with Windows support issues). Julia, comes in at about 9 years. Nim, another notable project, appears to have took around 11 years. We might can expect things to go a bit faster now, than back then, but within reason. And referring to programming languages that are reasonably well known and used.
Also, forget a brace in your program, just one, and the compiler can tell.
Forget one indentation? No dice.
And while braces can break things too, editor settings can make it much easier to break things with significant whitespace. [2] [3]
Also, refactoring. [4]
Editor stuff. [5]
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3296782
[2]: https://medium.com/@rwxrob/significant-whitespace-is-still-t...
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24854090
[4]: https://lobste.rs/s/yyuo7f/significant_whitespace_good_bad#c...
[5]: https://lobste.rs/s/yyuo7f/significant_whitespace_good_bad#c...
> Also, forget a brace in your program, just one, and the compiler can tell.
Should we duplicate every character, so the compiler can tell if you leave one out? This is not a radiation-hardened quine [7].
> editor settings can make it much easier to break things with significant whitespace.
Then use an editor which doesn't.
> Selecting all code contained in a brace or a parents is so much easier (in vim the % movement) than if you have to walk lines.
I have a plugin for Neovim that adds indentation-based motions. The implementation is trivial.
[6] https://github.com/psf/black
[7] https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/57257/radiation...
As far as I can see V is well placed on TechEmpower so it must be doing something right at least: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r21&tes...
Maybe they didn't deliver on all their claims yet, so what? They seem to be trying something cool. Certainly not reason for all the vitrol.
It's odd how obvious slanderous remarks and insults directed at developers (like grifter), in addition to provably false statements (like vaporware) are being pushed about the project (like language is unusable), don't seem to get removed. Somehow, that gets left up. Not just here, but other threads too.
Yet, attempts to directly refute or at least push back on the barrage of misinformation about a clearly popular GitHub project get flagged, downvoted, or removed. Don't think that would at all be tolerated if such was done to other open source developers and languages, nor for as long (many years). It isn't right nor is it fair.
Seems like I've been listening to Crystal Castles too much these days.