Programming languages to watch: LiveScript, Julia, Elixir

http://adambard.com/blog/3-languages-to-watch/

by philippelh • 13 years ago

235 102 13 years ago

enobrev• 13 years ago

This may possibly be intentional, but seems a bit confusing. The original name of Javascript was LiveScript when initially released with Netscape in the 90s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#Birth_at_Netscape

Edit: It seems it is intentional:

"LiveScript was one of the original names for JavaScript, so it seemed fitting. It's an inside joke for those who know JavaScript well."

http://livescript.net/#name

xutopia• 13 years ago

I wondered about that! Thanks for digging!

tracker1• 13 years ago

That is my single biggest issue with the LiveScript name... Not that most people know this, it still bothers me a lot.

Though, I'm one of the ones who had the same kind of problem when Mozilla named their new browser Firebird (before becoming Firefox).

gnosis• 13 years ago

To me, much more interesting than "a language targeting the Erlang VM.. [that] mostly imports Erlang's syntax" is:

Lisp Flavoured Erlang:

http://www.trapexit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=40268

terhechte4• 13 years ago

I really like Julia. I'm currently playing around with it whenever I find some spare time. I don't see it as a competitor to R, I think it could well be something along the lines of Python or Go.

It is LLVM based, and already really fast even though it is still a 0.2 and the JIT seems to have a lot of room for optimisation.

Whats more, it seems to offer just the right blend of language features: - Easily include C libraries via a simple ffi [1] - It is homoiconic like Lisp and thus allows for fantastic macro facilities [2]

- It has solid parallel programming support via a Coroutines implementation (Tasks) (similar to Goroutines as far as I can tell)

- It is a non-pure functional language

- In contrast to Go it has generics, so functional constructs like map, apply, drop, reduce, fold, partition & friends are already in there (or can easily be implemented) [3]

- It has optional types, so that you can assign types and the compiler will check for it and mark errors and will be able to create optimised code, but you don't have to [4]

- Running external programs is a joy [5] (Example: a=readall(`echo hello`))

The community seems to be very alive. There's a simple web framework called "Morsel" and I've recently set it up against a couple of contenders from the web framework benchmark (cpoll-cppsp, phreeze, and some others), and even though it is still a version 0.2, the performance for the json serialization benchmark would be pretty close to Scalatra (I yet have to publish these numbers, will do so soon).

I really hope that Julia will grow, as I love the choices that went into the design of the language, and it would be a shame if it would be only a replacement for R instead of something much bigger, as it is such a nice language.

[1] http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/calling-c-and-for...

[2] http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/metaprogramming/

[3] http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/stdlib/base/#general-col...

[4] http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/types/

[5] http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/running-external-...

Synroc• 13 years ago

I don't know if you have any experience with it, but how would you compare it to clojure?

terhechte4• 13 years ago

I bought a Clojure book and started going through it, and I have some limited experience with ELisp and Racket. I really like lispy (is that even a word?) languages, so I tried to get into Clojure, also because I really like the ideas behind ClojureScript and the various libraries for it. So far, my experience has been mixed, I guess because I didn't read enough, or maybe it is my unfamiliarity with anything jvm-related (having never been a Java guy), as that's also something I constantly run into when I'm doing Scala. I'll try to write a bit more in Clojure, but so far Julia felt easier to get into, and I really like the ability to use types so that stupid errors don't result in runtime issues.

There're way too many interesting languages these days :)

adambard5• 13 years ago

Quite different. I think a good way to imagine Julia is as a science-flavoured Go with dynamic types.

Well, no, that's not quite right. Really, it's more like someone took Matlab and made it a real general-purpose language, and built it close enough to C to be generally fast, not just fast at a few things. Matlab actually has more in common with Clojure, being a JVM language.

tel4• 13 years ago

Julia is aiming at Matlab while Clojure is aiming at JVM/Lisp. If you're used to using Matlab for scientific computation then at some point Julia will become a much better option. Much of their work is around lifting heavy numerical components up into the runtime which are wasted on a lot of the programming one would do in something like Clojure.

I'd say they're pretty different niches.

susi22• 13 years ago

Agreed. Julia seems like it could really become a competitor to MATLAB (unless you rely on fancy toolboxes). I think their blog has some nice posts:

http://julialang.org/blog/

especially these seem very interesting:

http://julialang.org/blog/2013/03/julia-tutorial-MIT/

It's also a huge plus that they can pretty much call any python inline:

http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/jdj.mit.edu/~stevenj/IJulia%...

So we have the fall back python libraries and can do plotting etc..

jfb• 13 years ago

I've been reading the Julia docs this morning, and it actually looks like it might be a good fit for my problem domain (video); most of the real heavy computational lifting in my applications happens across a C API boundary, but I still push enough bits that having e.g. unsigned ints (gazes balefully at Gosling) is a requirement.

Hmm.

glesica2• 13 years ago

I have been following Julia development for a while now (about a year and a half). It seems like it will be a great tool, but it is still VERY immature. The amount of breakage, especially with regards to important packages like plotting, has become something of an "in" joke. I'm really looking forward to seeing them get their package management situation worked out and a set of core packages nice and stable.

terhechte4• 13 years ago

I concur. I can't really use it for any important projects right now, so I'm just following along and playing with it for simple and small scripts where breakage and failure are not a problem :)

_pmf_• 13 years ago

I'm really looking forward to seeing them get their package management situation worked out and a set of core packages nice and stable.

I really don't understand why each language ecosystem has to go through this phase. What would be so bad about implementing packaging the way it has been done in OSGi for a decade? It's language agnostic, since the bundle can export/import namespaces or arbitrary capabilities, it has solved the dependencies-are-a-graph-not-a-list problem, it supports versioning and multiple parallel versions of the same package.

geebee3• 13 years ago

Julia does seem promising. Interesting that you see it as more along the lines of python than R.

I just finished the data science coursera class, and while we used Python, we didn't get into R. I've played around a little R on my own, and while I certainly don't think it's too difficult to learn for a programmer with a math background, as a programmer I feel much more at home with Python. Given the choice, I'd rather use Python than R just because it feels more natural to me.

If Julia is a truly a programming language, I'd agree that it would be more of a competitor with python than R (in the sense that its audience would be people like me who would lean toward python)... but I think it could be very successful by making it very easy for a programmer to stay within a programming language. In other words, it wouldn't compete with R, it would compete with python by bringing what you get from R to a programming language.

peatmoss6• 13 years ago

(Hi there, I took the coursera course too!) I disagree with your compare and contrast of R as not-a-programming-language. R is absolutely a real language in every sense of the term. R, and its precursor SPlus, both have a very lispy feel. If you should ever try scheme after learning R, the biggest superficial difference you'll find is that the parentheses move:

function(x1, x2) becomes (function x1 x2)

R has a number of warts as a language (e.g. how it deals with copying objects in memory, amongst others), however it's just as "real" as Python, which also has its warts.

I do like the direction Julia's heading, even if I'd prefer to see something like Clojure/Incanter, or better still, something like Racket be the next baton holder.

ioddly• 13 years ago

Wow, it's come along nicely since the last time I saw it. I seem to recall they didn't even have macros and were doing everything with eval. As somebody with no interest in scientific programming, Julia still seems like a very well thought out language. I'll have to try writing an application with it soon.

runarberg• 13 years ago

I'm also really excited about the integration of Julia and IPython. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6173212

noelwelsh2• 13 years ago

Nice selection.

Livescript looks like it fixes some of the warts of Coffeescript while also raising the level of abstraction.

Julia is something I've already been looking at. I'm a bit torn on it -- it has vastly fewer libraries than Scipy and R so I don't know if I'm ready to "wear the hair shirt". At this point in life I'm more concerned with doing stuff with existing libraries than building the libraries myself.

Elixir I'm less excited about, because I'm not so excited about Erlang. I feel that Scala provides all of what I'd want from Erlang, along with better sequential performance.

ihnorton• 13 years ago

it has vastly fewer libraries than Scipy and R

The incredible PyCall.jl package allows use of existing Python libraries from Julia with automatic object translation, including no-copy use of NumPy arrays:

https://github.com/stevengj/PyCall.jl

There is also heavy work on a Julia IPython kernal, which is under testing right now and very close to release.

ambirex• 13 years ago

When looking at languages like LiveScript (or CoffeeScript) I say to myself: "Javascript has been around for 18 years, how long will this be around for?"

Not saying not to use it, but my use case has to overcome that question.

noelwelsh2• 13 years ago

With Coffeescript (I don't know about Livescript) the compiled output is close enough to hand-written Javascript that, if Coffeescript suddenly disappeared into a black hole, you could use the compiled output as source if needed.

adambard5• 13 years ago

Livescript is a fork of Coffeescript, and LS 1.2 purports to have improved the JS output for readability, so I think you'd be ok.

bayesianhorse2• 13 years ago

I usually introduce CoffeeScript as "shorthand for best-practice Javascript".

The big weakness of CoffeeScript IMHO currently is the weak organizational structure of the community. I don't see a clear path where the project is going, and already there are forks/parallels like livescript and IcedCoffeeScript, both with their own strengths.

The output is usually more readable than a lot of JQuery plugins I've seen ;-)

I regard CoffeeScript and its cousins as tools rather than frameworks or languages.

jashkenas2• 13 years ago

One of the nice bonuses of targeting lowest-common-denominator JavaScript is that it makes things extremely compatible, and durable.

Even if all of the world's copies of the CoffeeScript compiler disappeared tomorrow afternoon, in between sips of tea, your compiled code would still run on every JS runtime (back to IE6), and would still be compatible with all other JavaScript libraries, and future versions of CoffeeScript as well.

vinceguidry• 13 years ago

If it goes away, just compile the source to javascript and maintain that.

RyanMcGreal• 13 years ago

How human-readable is the compiled javascript?

gordonguthrie4• 13 years ago

If you are into functional programming and new functional languages we have a good little conference called Mostly Functional going on @ Turing

http://mostlyfunctional.com

We have two presentations on languages targeting the Erlang VM, Elixir and Joxa, as well as other goodness...

(Disclaimer, I am the organiser)

gordonguthrie4• 13 years ago

Oh, and if you buy a ticket by Sunday you could win a FREE pair of conference pyjamas with the attractive slogan 'Old programmers never die they just become Mostly Functional'

http://www.cafepress.com/mostlyfunctional

(Shameless plug...)

goostavos2• 13 years ago

Whoa! Are those going to be recorded and made available? I would love to see the presentation on Building A Robot Army Of Raspberry Pis!

gordonguthrie4• 13 years ago

Yeah, erk, well reminded, I must get onto that. I am organising the event, and doing that talk and I haven't finished writing the software yet...

rybosome• 13 years ago

I would absolutely love to attend this, but I don't think I could justify an international trip right now (getting married in 1.5 months). What are the chances you'll do another one next year?

gordonguthrie4• 13 years ago

Well Turing is an annual event (http://turingfestival.com) and I usually organise something on the Fringe @ Turing - it varies from year to year. Last year it was a CEO to CEO event, the year before there was a mini-Erlang factory and a Lean Startup day. Best thing is to follow @turingfestival on twitter and me @gordonguthrie and mebbies @mostlyfuns. Mebbies we will do 'it' again, mebbies we won't, prolly something(s) else or related...

bayesianhorse2• 13 years ago

Julia is in a weird place. It improves in speed over R and Python, but the head start of both of these languages is strong. Also it will be some time until julia can provide equivalent support for GUI and Web programming.

adestefan• 13 years ago

Julia fits well as the next step from Matlab. I've already seen groups of engineers across various disciplines that have turned to Julia instead of Matlab.

oinksoft2• 13 years ago

  Some other cool features of Elixir:
    ...
    * List comprehensions

I'd just like to point out that Erlang has list comprehensions as well.

adambard5• 13 years ago

Shh! I know, the list just looked dumb with only two items.

reeses• 13 years ago

Feeling a little Rick Perry this morning? :-)

jeremyjh• 13 years ago

Polymorphic records are worth a mention.

colanderman2• 13 years ago

Not only list comprehensions, but database comprehensions as well.

oinksoft2• 13 years ago

Are you referring to Erlang or Elixir? Erlang has QLC (Query List Comprehensions) which work like that for Mnesia, for instance. I couldn't find information on this in the Elixir docs but I probably didn't know where to look.

lubomir2• 13 years ago

What this article calls currying is actually partial application.

Partial application is a technique where you take a function that requires n arguments, pass in the first one and get a function that needs n-1 arguments.

Currying is a technique where you take a function that takes n arguments and turn it into a function that can be partially applied. E.g. in Haskell it works with tuples as arguments. There is function 'curry :: ((a, b) -> c) -> (a -> b -> c)' and its counterpart 'uncurry :: (a -> b -> c) -> ((a, b) -> c)'.

adambard5• 13 years ago

You get a function that can take N arguments and return a value, or 1 to N-1 arguments and return a function representing a partial application, which itself exhibits the same behavior:

   add3 = (a, b, c) --> a + b + c

   x = add3 1
   y = x 1
   z = y 1 # z = 3

If you look at the compiled code, it is actually an abstraction over a partial application, but at that point is that not just an implementation detail?

lubomir2• 13 years ago

I agree it is not really important.

The main difference between the two I see is that partial application basically binds a certain argument to a fixed value, while currying only changes the way the function is called (thus allowing for easier partial application). It is easier to see on a function with more than two arguments. Imagine f:(A×B×C)->D. Currying it will yield f':A->(B->(C->D)), so you would call it as f'(1)(2)(3). On the other hand, partially applying on first argument it would yield f'':(B×C)->D.

acjohnson552• 13 years ago

How is currying better than partial function application (particularly with keyword arguments)? If your function isn't commutative, then it seems to give greater importance/flexibility to the first arguments.

gohrt• 13 years ago

As usual, the terms are misused.

Any discussion of currying vs partial function application needs to start by explicitly stating what the author intends each to mean.

acjohnson552• 13 years ago

Fair enough, but is currying "better" than partial function creation in some way?

AndyKelley3• 13 years ago

Shameless plug: My 2d canvas-based game engine supports LiveScript out of the box: https://github.com/superjoe30/chem/

ZoFreX• 13 years ago

Thanks for the link, this looks like a fun way to try out LiveScript! :)

AndyKelley3• 13 years ago

Enjoy. To use LiveScript just use the .ls extension instead of .js. That includes chemfile.js (chemfile.ls for livescript)

kenjackson• 13 years ago

I've been playing with TypeScript a fair bit lately. Really like it: http://www.typescriptlang.org/

Haven't used LiveScript yet.

lightblade• 13 years ago

I was a bit torn between LiveScript and TypeScript. But after using both a bit, I think I like LiveScript better.

I feel TypeScript doesn't offer much beyond static type checking, and this can be compensated by using closure compiler together with LiveScript.

pc86• 13 years ago

As someone who has just this week started serious study of Erlang, I'll have to look at Elixir as well. Ending statements with periods does take some getting used to!

santialbo• 13 years ago

LiveScript looks amazing. I love how much F#-y looks. I'm definitely going to start using it for personal projects.

nnq• 13 years ago

I really hope people would promote Livescript or GorillaScript more, as better compile-to-js languages.

...Coffeescript stole the spotlight and nobody wants to hear about anything else, but it's mediocre and boring language-wise!

jashkenas2• 13 years ago

As the creator of CoffeeScript, I hope so too!

A big part of the original idea with CoffeeScript was to exhaustively annotate the compiler so that folks could take it, and run off in more radical directions. Whereas CoffeeScript is intentionally conservative (no standard library beyond what JavaScript offers is allowed, for example), the fact that LiveScript is a fork off Coco, which is a fork off CoffeeScript, is a wonderful tangent.

There are static and optional typing flavors, asynchronous-flow-control flavors, macro-oriented flavors, functional ones, contract ones, and of course the rewrite of the basic language itself. In open source, there's enough spotlight for all of 'em.

why-el• 13 years ago

Just for the record, Elixir was favourably reviewed by the creator of Erlang itself.[1]

[1]http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html

lsdr• 13 years ago

Have yet to take a look in Julia, but I've been playing around with Elixir for a while and looks great. Elixir macros particularly got my attention:

http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/5.html

There is a book on Elixir coming out from Pragmatic Programmers sometime and will be written by Dave Thomas, which might generate a certain buzz too. This may be a good time to dive into it a bit more.

gpsarakis• 13 years ago

Julia and Elixir definitely seem worth checking. I especially like the interchangeability between Erlang & Elixir.

sinkasapa• 13 years ago

I hope that some Elixir features make it in to Erlang but I guess I'm one of those rare people that likes the Erlang syntax a lot better. I don't really understand the hate for it, it seems so clear and specific. Anyway, if people want choices for an Erlang like experience, without the Prolog syntax, check out LFE:

https://github.com/rvirding/lfe

rhizome31• 13 years ago

The thing I don't like about Erlang's syntax is that often I have to change the character at the end of the line when I need to move a line. It makes refactoring more tedious. I have no problem with it when reading code :)

ilaksh• 13 years ago

Also check out ToffeeScript.

reddit_clone• 13 years ago

Also for people coming from Haskell/ML background there is GorillaScript.

_sh2• 13 years ago

The language I'm most interested in currently is kernel: mathematically underpinned by the vau calculus, with a smart creator and steward, and a better abstract model for macros than even Racket's stellar syntax-parse. Implementations abound.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(programming_language)

takikawa• 13 years ago

and a better abstract model for macros than even Racket's stellar syntax-parse.

To clarify a little bit, `syntax-parse` is actually not its own model for macros but is a sophisticated front-end for Racket's underlying macro system (described in this paper: http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/publications/jfp12-draft-fcdf.pdf). Also see Jay McCarthy's blog article that tries to clarify this: http://jeapostrophe.github.io/2013-07-22-123list-post.html

Racket's macro system and Kernel's fexprs are pretty fundamentally different, so I don't think the comparison is very apt. In particular, Racket's macros can be entirely compiled away.

_sh2• 13 years ago

While true, I was comparing macro APIs from a usability perspective and should have avoided the term 'abstract model'.

My point was the mental model I refer to when using $lambda is simpler and easier to understand than my mental model for syntax-case, syntax-rules, syntax-parse and friends. The very fact that 'Racket's macros can be entirely compiled away' complicates my mental model which must now accommodate 'phases', compile-time/run-time dichotomies, require for-syntax, etc.

laureny• 13 years ago

Of all the "Javascript.next" languages I hear on a regular basis, it seems to me Microsoft's Typescript is the one most likely to become successful, if only because every time I read an article about it, most of the comments are extremely positive about it and it looks like there are already some fairly large projects written in it.

In comparison, I don't see a bright future for Dart nor Livescript (although I secretly root for Dart because I have more confidence in Google to take this language somewhere interesting).

kldavenport• 13 years ago

What about R?

pwang• 13 years ago

What about it? It's 20 years old this year, and the language it was meant to clone, S, is almost 40 years old. What's new to keep an eye on?

stewbrew• 13 years ago

What features do these languages offer that make it worth watching them? Neither of them seems to offer anything novel.

Programming languages to watch: LiveScript, Julia, Elixir

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