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digitalmars.D.learn - OT: interesting talk by Jane Street technical guy on why they used

reply Laeeth Isharc <spamnolaeeth nospamlaeeth.com> writes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKcOkWzj0_s

a little old but still relevant.  talks about importance of 
brevity and strong types for readability (also avoiding 
boilerplate).  two of the partners there committed to read every 
line of code (originally because they were terrified).  very hard 
to code review boilerplate carefully because it is just too dull! 
  (can't pay people enough!)

correctness is v important if you are doing high volumes.  but 
being able to iterate rapidly is important in other areas too.

value of predictable performance in generated code.

much easier to hire great programmers in ocaml.
way they switched wasn't a big strategic plan.  guy just turned 
up at a windows shop (spreadsheets with VB backends etc) in a 
temp job between university courses.  ended up being permanent 
thing.  started hiring people to help him with analysis.  became 
clearer they needed a better solution - nightmare from 
copying/paste with spreadsheets.  sent email to ocaml list and 15 
responses of which 12 great and 3 he hired - great ratio.  maybe 
do an experiment.  wrote first version of system in 3 months, 
worked well and slowly expanded from there.

part of attraction of ocaml was ability to hire.  later if they 
need more people they can teach them.  they don't hire bad 
programmers, and it's easy to teach good ones.



problem - becomes problem when calling .net libraries.  windows 
not great for high performance (timestamps weird).
Oct 02 2015
parent reply Mengu <mengukagan gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 3 October 2015 at 01:41:55 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKcOkWzj0_s

 a little old but still relevant.  talks about importance of 
 brevity and strong types for readability (also avoiding 
 boilerplate).  two of the partners there committed to read 
 every line of code (originally because they were terrified).  
 very hard to code review boilerplate carefully because it is 
 just too dull!
  (can't pay people enough!)

 [...]


there's also andy smith's talk [0] at dconf 2015 on adapting D, 
titled "hedge fund development case study."

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KBhb0iWsWQ
Oct 03 2015
parent reply Laeeth Isharc <spamnolaeeth nospamlaeeth.com> writes:
On Saturday, 3 October 2015 at 15:58:38 UTC, Mengu wrote:

 On Saturday, 3 October 2015 at 01:41:55 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
 wrote:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKcOkWzj0_s

 a little old but still relevant.  talks about importance of 
 brevity and strong types for readability (also avoiding 
 boilerplate).  two of the partners there committed to read 
 every line of code (originally because they were terrified).  
 very hard to code review boilerplate carefully because it is 
 just too dull!
  (can't pay people enough!)

 [...]


 there's also andy smith's talk [0] at dconf 2015 on adapting D, 
 titled "hedge fund development case study."

 [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KBhb0iWsWQ


Thanks!  Funnily enough I rewatched the Jane Street talk because 
of a suggestion made by John Colvin when I was talking to Andy 
and him recently.  It's a good talk by Andy, and I hope to build 
on this with him at Codemesh next month.

The way languages actually get adopted is different from how 
people who are sitting in eg the kind of enterprise environment 
where they are never going to be early adopters imagine.  Hence 
one is much better off focusing efforts on those already 
receptive (and who are looking for a solution to their pain) than 
trying to convert those who are happy with what they have or 
uninterested (possibly rationally so) in exploring new things.

Being able to understand the codebase is underrated I think.
Oct 03 2015
parent reply Mengu <mengukagan gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 3 October 2015 at 16:33:38 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 On Saturday, 3 October 2015 at 15:58:38 UTC, Mengu wrote:

 On Saturday, 3 October 2015 at 01:41:55 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
 wrote:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKcOkWzj0_s

 a little old but still relevant.  talks about importance of 
 brevity and strong types for readability (also avoiding 
 boilerplate).  two of the partners there committed to read 
 every line of code (originally because they were terrified).  
 very hard to code review boilerplate carefully because it is 
 just too dull!
  (can't pay people enough!)

 [...]


 there's also andy smith's talk [0] at dconf 2015 on adapting 
 D, titled "hedge fund development case study."

 [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KBhb0iWsWQ


 Thanks!  Funnily enough I rewatched the Jane Street talk 
 because of a suggestion made by John Colvin when I was talking 
 to Andy and him recently.  It's a good talk by Andy, and I hope 
 to build on this with him at Codemesh next month.

 The way languages actually get adopted is different from how 
 people who are sitting in eg the kind of enterprise environment 
 where they are never going to be early adopters imagine.  Hence 
 one is much better off focusing efforts on those already 
 receptive (and who are looking for a solution to their pain) 
 than trying to convert those who are happy with what they have 
 or uninterested (possibly rationally so) in exploring new 
 things.

 Being able to understand the codebase is underrated I think.


i watched this talk by yaron last year when i was looking at 
alternatives for sml. i was taking the programming languages 
course on coursera by dan grossman. ocaml looked like it tooked 
off at the beginning of 2000s but then due to many problems it 
failed to be a mainstream language.

imho, D will never take off like go or rust because people who 
adopted these languages are mostly python and ruby developers. D 
has an incredibly creative and helpful community yet our 
community is not as enthusiastic as go's and rust's community. 
phobos is extremely a great library yet not very welcoming and 
feels overly complicated. we should reduce the amount of WTFs 
when reading the phobos source and docs.
Oct 03 2015
parent Laeeth Isharc <spamnolaeeth nospamlaeeth.com> writes:
On Sunday, 4 October 2015 at 00:45:16 UTC, Mengu wrote:

 i watched this talk by yaron last year when i was looking at 
 alternatives for sml. i was taking the programming languages 
 course on coursera by dan grossman. ocaml looked like it tooked 
 off at the beginning of 2000s but then due to many problems it 
 failed to be a mainstream language.


interesting, thanks.  I played with ocaml a little, but simply 
didn't have time to do more than that.  I was interested in the 
commercial aspects of his experience, as that happens to resonate 
with my own experience.


 imho, D will never take off like go or rust because people who 
 adopted these languages are mostly python and ruby developers.


rust is only barely out of beta, and doesn't yet seem to be used 
in many enterprises, whereas D's status is rather different given 
the size of firms built on it.  I know what you mean about 
perceptions, and that perhaps may change now you have two of the 
best C++ programmers working on it fulltime, and not just one ;)


 D has an incredibly creative and helpful community yet our 
 community is not as enthusiastic as go's and rust's community.


why do you think that is ?  one reason might be different kind of 
use cases.  one has a different emotional experience and draws 
different kinds of people for some kinds of projects than others, 
and that's surely reflected in the tone of the community.  also 
things just have their own spirit, and that is what it is, and 
enthusiasm can be a positive thing, but isn't without drawbacks 
either.  I'd say I am impressed by the sheer grit people have, 
and that's something important too.


 phobos is extremely a great library yet not very welcoming and 
 feels overly complicated. we should reduce the amount of WTFs 
 when reading the phobos source and docs.


look at the rate of change as well as the level.  the docs could 
be better, and we could have more blog posts.  but picture is 
much better than when I first looked at D a couple of years back. 
  I remember trying for ages just to get std.net.curl to work and 
almost giving up in despair.  (I noticed recently docs were still 
wrong, so I fixed them).  we should give ourselves credit for the 
distance travelled, even if there's a long road further to get to 
where we want.


Laeeth.
Oct 03 2015