<story><title>Beyond Functional Programming: The Verse Programming Language [pdf]</title><url>https://simon.peytonjones.org/assets/pdfs/haskell-exchange-22.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bmitc</author><text>These slides need a lot of work. I&amp;#x27;ll read the paper later, but the slides really lack context and motivation.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;m a little disheartened to see &amp;quot;Objectively: no. All languages are Turing-complete&amp;quot; in the context of the question of needing another language. It&amp;#x27;s a throw away comment and largely irrelevant when considering the actual use of programming languages. If one has to state this platitude, it is more accurate to say &amp;quot;theoretically&amp;quot; rather than &amp;quot;objectively&amp;quot;, as I think the latter is actually debatable.&lt;p&gt;* The utility of the choice syntax over comprehension syntax is not clear at all. The choice thing seems neat, but I don&amp;#x27;t understand why comprehension semantics weren&amp;#x27;t just extended. Every example of choice seems to refer to sequences and comprehensions anyway to make the meaning clear. Will have to see more examples. Right now, the syntax seems a bit quirky, especially with `false?` thrown in.&lt;p&gt;* Why is `fst` not named `first`?! The shortening is maddening to me. It saves two characters (negligible savings), decreases readability, and first is probably just as fast to type.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;m still not sure why they&amp;#x27;re creating this language, what problems it solves, and what any of it has to do with a metaverse.&lt;p&gt;These are professors and language experts, so I&amp;#x27;m a bit surprised by the presentation. Also, the idea that this language will be learnable as a first language is ambitious, if not naive.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danpalmer</author><text>&amp;gt; These slides need a lot of work. I&amp;#x27;ll read the paper later, but the slides really lack context and motivation.&lt;p&gt;SPJ is an exceptional public speaker, but that involves a lot of talking, a lot of context, audience participation, and a lot of wild gesticulating at slides.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure if this talk was recorded, but I am sure if it was the recording will be much better than the slides, the slides are not really designed for consumption outside of the talk context, but rather as a reminder rather than taking notes. At least that&amp;#x27;s my experience having seen a number of his talks over the years.</text></comment>
<story><title>Beyond Functional Programming: The Verse Programming Language [pdf]</title><url>https://simon.peytonjones.org/assets/pdfs/haskell-exchange-22.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bmitc</author><text>These slides need a lot of work. I&amp;#x27;ll read the paper later, but the slides really lack context and motivation.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;m a little disheartened to see &amp;quot;Objectively: no. All languages are Turing-complete&amp;quot; in the context of the question of needing another language. It&amp;#x27;s a throw away comment and largely irrelevant when considering the actual use of programming languages. If one has to state this platitude, it is more accurate to say &amp;quot;theoretically&amp;quot; rather than &amp;quot;objectively&amp;quot;, as I think the latter is actually debatable.&lt;p&gt;* The utility of the choice syntax over comprehension syntax is not clear at all. The choice thing seems neat, but I don&amp;#x27;t understand why comprehension semantics weren&amp;#x27;t just extended. Every example of choice seems to refer to sequences and comprehensions anyway to make the meaning clear. Will have to see more examples. Right now, the syntax seems a bit quirky, especially with `false?` thrown in.&lt;p&gt;* Why is `fst` not named `first`?! The shortening is maddening to me. It saves two characters (negligible savings), decreases readability, and first is probably just as fast to type.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;m still not sure why they&amp;#x27;re creating this language, what problems it solves, and what any of it has to do with a metaverse.&lt;p&gt;These are professors and language experts, so I&amp;#x27;m a bit surprised by the presentation. Also, the idea that this language will be learnable as a first language is ambitious, if not naive.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TuringTest</author><text>I see using the choice syntax as PROLOG-esque, rather than Python-esque.&lt;p&gt;When you are building simple structures to iterate upon, it makes sense to use the more readable comprehension syntax, where you define a list or set of items and their desired properties.&lt;p&gt;Yet this terse syntax makes more sense for logic programming, where a lot of the domain logic is built upon generate-and-test patterns; you define a combinatoric search space which is the enumeration of all base value in pairs (or tuples), and check which ones are kept for the next processing steps. When using this pattern, it&amp;#x27;s clearer to be able to express the space with the shortest syntax rather than the verbose one.&lt;p&gt;As for the adequacy and need for the language, I have my own ideas on what&amp;#x27;s needed for the stated use case, and I do agree with the authors that this kind of language will really be easier to learn for people without a programming background; it looks much more like mathematics than the traditional von-Neumann-architecture, continuation-based languages, and its declarative nature may make it easier to approach without having a full understanding of runtime behavior.</text></comment>