Wonderful article and a good fit with HN’s motto of “move slowly and preserve things” as opposed to Silicon Valley’s jingoistic “move fast and break things”.
It highlights the often perplexing human tendency to reinvent rather than reuse. Why do we, as a species, ignore hard-won experience and instead restart? In doing so, often making mistakes that could have been avoided if we’d taken the time or had the curiosity/humility to learn from others. This seems particularly prevalent in software: “standing on the feet of giants” is a default rather than exception.
That aside, the article was thoroughly educational and enjoyable. I came away with much-deepened insight and admiration for those involved in researching, designing and building the language. Resolved to find and read the referenced “steelman” and language design rationale papers.
AmbientTalk did this. I used it for a demo where I dragged a mp3 player's UI button to another machine, where pressing play would play it back on the originator's speakers. Proper actor programming in the veins of E and Erlang.
I wish more people knew about the Burroughs Large Systems[0] machines. I haven't written any code for them, but I got turned-on to them by a financial Customer who ran a ClearPath Series A MCP system back in the late 90s, and later by a fellow contractor who did ALGOL programming for Unisys in the mid-70s and early 80s. It seems like an architecture with an uncompromising attitude toward security, and an utterly parallel universe to what the rest of the industry is (except for, perhaps, the IBM AS/400, at least in the sense of being uncompromising on design ideals).
The Twitter account is from April 2026:
https://xcancel.com/Iqiipi_Essays
There is no named public author. A truly amazing productivity for such a short time period and generously the author does not take any credit.
I am wondering what the Ada equivalent of affine types is. What is the feature that solves the problem that affine types solve in Rust.
Limited controlled types probably come closest.
https://learn.adacore.com/courses/advanced-ada/parts/resourc...
It'd be a neat trick to have a single unified language which could bridge the gap between software and hardware description languages.
off-topic, this article has almost the same theme as dawnfox/dayfox which I love. It fits nicely with my terminal on the left. Cool stuff
Wonderful article and a good fit with HN’s motto of “move slowly and preserve things” as opposed to Silicon Valley’s jingoistic “move fast and break things”.
It highlights the often perplexing human tendency to reinvent rather than reuse. Why do we, as a species, ignore hard-won experience and instead restart? In doing so, often making mistakes that could have been avoided if we’d taken the time or had the curiosity/humility to learn from others. This seems particularly prevalent in software: “standing on the feet of giants” is a default rather than exception.
That aside, the article was thoroughly educational and enjoyable. I came away with much-deepened insight and admiration for those involved in researching, designing and building the language. Resolved to find and read the referenced “steelman” and language design rationale papers.
The next language ought to ensure memory-safe conditions across the network.
AmbientTalk did this. I used it for a demo where I dragged a mp3 player's UI button to another machine, where pressing play would play it back on the originator's speakers. Proper actor programming in the veins of E and Erlang.
https://soft.vub.ac.be/amop/
Already exists since way back: https://github.com/mozart/mozart2 (for example)
the article states that the language can have extensions for different domains, so it is also an option.
And the answer is… Rust.
Or Algol 68, which is doing a comeback.
Or even ESPOL and its evolution, NEWP, never went away, only available to Unisys customers that care about security as top deployment priority.
I wish more people knew about the Burroughs Large Systems[0] machines. I haven't written any code for them, but I got turned-on to them by a financial Customer who ran a ClearPath Series A MCP system back in the late 90s, and later by a fellow contractor who did ALGOL programming for Unisys in the mid-70s and early 80s. It seems like an architecture with an uncompromising attitude toward security, and an utterly parallel universe to what the rest of the industry is (except for, perhaps, the IBM AS/400, at least in the sense of being uncompromising on design ideals).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_Large_Systems
Yes, IBM i and z/OS, are the other survivors.