On Monday, 21 January 2013 at 23:42:49 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

> I've heard that argument before, but I've yet to come across a good
> explanation of how this "dynamic mindset" different from the static
> one. Just that "it exists" and "it's different". Far as I can tell so
> far, the "dynamic mindset" is just "Bugs? Efficiency? Meh, I don't care
> as long as I'm piling on and shipping (easily broken) code".
>
> So what is this "dynamic mindset" that makes using dynamic typing
> productive and non-bug-prone? How does it work, if it's not as I
> described above?
>

Take a look at this project: https://github.com/pydata/pandas

It's a very effective library, that's easy to use in a flexible, interactive fashion. It's fast due to judicious use of C and cython where absolutely necessary and numpy elsewhere.

One of the strengths of the library is it's ability to make a "best guess" as to what to do with information it's passed, irrelevant of what type that information is. It's not the sort of behaviour you'd want in a large production codebase, but for an interactive toolbox it speeds things up by orders of magnitude. Whatever you throw at it, it just works, which for a high-pressure financial analyst (the primary target audience) is absolutely invaluable.

This is all stuff that (with better shared library support) D could do, making it the awesome king of all languages, but at the moment i'll still to drafting my data analysis in python and then writing it up in D when it's settled.

P.S.
dmd 32bit on linux produces functional shared libraries, which can be happily called by IDL (http://www.exelisvis.com/ProductsServices/IDL.aspx). IDL rules the roost in several data heavy scientific arenas (fusion physics, medical imaging, solar physics, astophysics etc) so this could be a potential jackpot for D. By and large people don't write their own extensions for IDL as they don't want to get their hands dirty with C. D could be the perfect tool for the job.

I've recently started collaborating with some people from MAST and JET (http://www.ccfe.ac.uk/), working on some better data analysis tools for some of the fusion diagnostics, to be run online during "shots" (running the reactor) and retrospectively. They all use matlab (yuck) and/or IDL so naturally i'll be writing my code as extensions to IDL, written in D!

On Tuesday, 22 January 2013 at 00:24:04 UTC, John Colvin wrote:

> P.S.
> dmd 32bit on linux produces functional shared libraries, which can be happily called by IDL

to clarify: extern(C) is required, there's nothing clever going on.

On 1/21/13 2:01 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> If I were a savvy businessman (read: no ethical fiber)

Now that came out of left field.

Andrei

On 1/21/13 3:06 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I have to admit that ddoc hasn't really done it for me (yet). I think
> the impediment is that the default output needs some work (mainly in CSS
> and indexing) before it is useful as actual documentation.

We should make a few macro batteries (HTML, mobi, pdf) readily available in e.g. tools/ or examples/.

Andrei

On Monday, 21 January 2013 at 09:48:46 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> On Monday, 21 January 2013 at 08:55:00 UTC, deadalnix wrote:
>> On Monday, 21 January 2013 at 07:20:59 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>>> On Monday, January 21, 2013 02:01:42 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>> D does continue to face an uphill battle for mindshare: These days,
>>>> most people who write code prefer to use languages that accept ANY
>>>> grammatically-correct code and deliberately remain silent about all
>>>> mechanically-checkable problems they can possibly ignore. Apparently
>>>> this is because they prefer to manually write extra unittests so that
>>>> only a subset of these errors are actually guaranteed to get caught
>>>> (if there's any guarantee at all).
>>>
>>> In my experience, most programmers don't want to write unit tests, so I
>>> suspect that the folks who are pushing for less strict languages generally
>>> aren't testing their code any better than the folks using strict languages
>>> are. I suspect that the main problem with folks wanting the compiler to just
>>> accept stuff is that too many of those folks started with scripting languages
>>> where you don't have compilation errors, because you don't compile anything.
>>>
>>> - Jonathan M Davis
>>
>> We move from ruby on rail to Node.js for scalability reasons !!!!!!
>
> I always laugh when I read such things.
>
> Back in 1999, I was doing web development in our own TCL Apache module, with a developed in-house framework (C/TCL), which was quite similar to Rails 1.0.
>
> Around 2002, we started to migrate to C++/.NET (at the time only available to Microsoft partner companies like ours), because of scalability issues.
>
> What this taught us is that if you want to really scale, only compiled languages will do a proper job.
>
> Yet people seem not to learn from history.
>

So I tested tweeting that with a #facepalm hashtag. I got some ruby on rail people following me now. That makes me really sad.

On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:17:26 -0500
Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:

> On 1/21/13 2:01 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > If I were a savvy businessman (read: no ethical fiber)
> 
> Now that came out of left field.
> 

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by lifting that (arbitrary?) part of my sentence out of its full intended context:

"[portion actually quoted here], I would manufacture a line of fire alarms advertised as being 100% silent[...etc...]and sell them exclusively to programmers."

The point, of course, being that preferring to forgo the safety and static checks that a static language provides is comparable to preferring silent fire alarms (Ie because they're both good things to be explicitly warned about, and deliberately silencing them is shortsighted and ill-advised). You seem to have latched on to some insignificant detail there and misinterpreted it, though I'm not sure exactly what or how.

You're not suggesting that trying to sell non-working fire alarms would be *ethical* are you? I wouldn't think so, but I'm not really sure what your point is.

On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:16:07 -0500
Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:17:26 -0500
> Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:
> 
> > On 1/21/13 2:01 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > > If I were a savvy businessman (read: no ethical fiber)
> > 
> > Now that came out of left field.
> > 
> 
> I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by lifting that (arbitrary?) part of my sentence out of its full intended context:
> 
> "[portion actually quoted here], I would manufacture a line of fire alarms advertised as being 100% silent[...etc...]and sell them exclusively to programmers."
> 
> The point, of course, being that preferring to forgo the safety and static checks that a static language provides is comparable to preferring silent fire alarms (Ie because they're both good things to be explicitly warned about, and deliberately silencing them is shortsighted and ill-advised). You seem to have latched on to some insignificant detail there and misinterpreted it, though I'm not sure exactly what or how.
> 
> You're not suggesting that trying to sell non-working fire alarms would be *ethical* are you? I wouldn't think so, but I'm not really sure what your point is.
> 

Is it just that my metaphor was too wild/obscure/unclear? Sometimes my metaphors do get a little obscure/silly/unclear, I do try to avoid that, though perhaps not always successfully.

On 1/21/2013 6:16 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:17:26 -0500
> Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:
>
>> On 1/21/13 2:01 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> If I were a savvy businessman (read: no ethical fiber)
>>
>> Now that came out of left field.
>>
>
> I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by lifting that
> (arbitrary?) part of my sentence out of its full intended context:
>
> "[portion actually quoted here], I would manufacture a line of fire
> alarms advertised as being 100% silent[...etc...]and sell them
> exclusively to programmers."
>
> The point, of course, being that preferring to forgo the safety and
> static checks that a static language provides is comparable to
> preferring silent fire alarms (Ie because they're both good things
> to be explicitly warned about, and deliberately silencing them is
> shortsighted and ill-advised). You seem to have latched on to some
> insignificant detail there and misinterpreted it, though I'm not sure
> exactly what or how.
>
> You're not suggesting that trying to sell non-working fire alarms would
> be *ethical* are you? I wouldn't think so, but I'm not really sure what
> your point is.
>

I think he suggested the quote equated being a savvy businessman with having no ethical fiber.

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 09:03:55PM -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 1/21/13 3:06 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >I have to admit that ddoc hasn't really done it for me (yet). I think
> >the impediment is that the default output needs some work (mainly in
> >CSS and indexing) before it is useful as actual documentation.
> 
> We should make a few macro batteries (HTML, mobi, pdf) readily
> available in e.g. tools/ or examples/.
[...]

+1. That would lower the "barrier to entry" and make it more likely for people to adopt ddoc.


T

-- 
Famous last words: I wonder what will happen if I do *this*...

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 11:20:44PM +0100, Thiez wrote:
> Nick, Teoh, what exactly do you guys hope to accomplish with your current discussion? What if someone who comes from a dynamically typed language wants to check out D and reads that vitriolic crap the two of you are spewing? I'm sure they'll feel very welcome knowing that what appears to be the D community thinks their current language of choice (which may simply be because it is the only language they have gotten a chance to learn) is cancer and a plague, that they are a fool, a dumbass, not a real programmer, and are guaranteed to write garbage. They will turn around and never return. And they'd be right. Why would they want to become part of a community that actively hates and despises them?
[...]

Let me set the record straight. I was merely writing my evaluation of languages that I have tried before, and I never intended to attack anyone personally. If I did, then I apologize. Criticizing a language does not equal attacking the people associated with it. But avoiding personal attacks does not exclude criticizing a language for what I perceive as its flaws.


T

-- 
Microsoft is to operating systems & security ... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking.