Ballerina, a language with structural type system(v1-0.ballerina.io)
v1-0.ballerina.io
Ballerina, a language with structural type system
https://v1-0.ballerina.io/
125 comments
You don’t even need to read past the product name. Like a lot of geeks they just don’t have a clue how to sell, nor how to hire talent that can. There is no part of their branding that is not a straight disaster. (And that shoulder massage…oy.)
Look, real ballerinas are totally hardcore badass atheletes who could easily kick all our flabby nerd asses while standing on one toe, and I take my hat off to them for what they do. But how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas” when discussing between themselves, never mind pitching to board rooms?
(Outside of the programmers-who-already-happily-self-identify-as-bronies subset, of course.)
Doubly so when the actual product looks as agile and graceful as a household broom.
Triply so when they can’t even do simple web pages right. (Just try the inline links on the Community page.) Or try the learn-by-example page, which spends seconds looking completely blank until some pointless Web 2.0 crap eventually loads in a perfectly static TOC.
I mean, I was prepared to overlook the marketing catastrophe just to read about their much vaunted take on structural typing (which is highly relevant to my interests), but this simple lack of technical competence means I am not going to waste any more time.
Money says the whole thing immediately sinks without trace, and none involved will ever be any the wiser why. What a pointless waste of effort.
Look, real ballerinas are totally hardcore badass atheletes who could easily kick all our flabby nerd asses while standing on one toe, and I take my hat off to them for what they do. But how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas” when discussing between themselves, never mind pitching to board rooms?
(Outside of the programmers-who-already-happily-self-identify-as-bronies subset, of course.)
Doubly so when the actual product looks as agile and graceful as a household broom.
Triply so when they can’t even do simple web pages right. (Just try the inline links on the Community page.) Or try the learn-by-example page, which spends seconds looking completely blank until some pointless Web 2.0 crap eventually loads in a perfectly static TOC.
I mean, I was prepared to overlook the marketing catastrophe just to read about their much vaunted take on structural typing (which is highly relevant to my interests), but this simple lack of technical competence means I am not going to waste any more time.
Money says the whole thing immediately sinks without trace, and none involved will ever be any the wiser why. What a pointless waste of effort.
I think Ballerina is a rather catchy name, to each his own I guess
Catchy doesn't mean marketable or hospitable. You don't/won't go out saying you love Ballerina. :P
The problem is that you should not use a widely used word for the name of your product/software/tools. It's hard for everyone who tries to get involved.
A good name IMO is Typescript if you want to compare.
The problem is that you should not use a widely used word for the name of your product/software/tools. It's hard for everyone who tries to get involved.
A good name IMO is Typescript if you want to compare.
> You don't/won't go out saying you love Ballerina.
Why not? What is wrong with "Ballerina"? If it's too feminine for you, that's a problem with you, and not the name.
Why not? What is wrong with "Ballerina"? If it's too feminine for you, that's a problem with you, and not the name.
To be fair, even though I don't at all agree that it is necessarily an issue, what he saids could be an issue for the other insecure brogrammers out there since it obviously is for him already
> Look, real ballerinas are totally hardcore badass atheletes
Yes.
> who could easily kick all our flabby nerd asses while standing on one toe
For the most part, no, though if both parties have to try to stand one toe during the exercise, maybe.
> But how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas” when discussing between themselves, never mind pitching to board rooms?
Uh, I don't usually identify, or want to identify, as name of tool when doing any of those things, whether the tool is Python, Ruby, C#, Docker, etc. Why would my lack of desire to do so when the tool is Ballerina be differentiating?
Identifying as user-of-toolname is different than identifying as toolname (and I actually prefer to minimize the former, too: when I'm dancing—contemporary or, less often these days, ballroom/swing, not classical ballet—I don't identify as a user of a particular brand of shoe, either.)
Yes.
> who could easily kick all our flabby nerd asses while standing on one toe
For the most part, no, though if both parties have to try to stand one toe during the exercise, maybe.
> But how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas” when discussing between themselves, never mind pitching to board rooms?
Uh, I don't usually identify, or want to identify, as name of tool when doing any of those things, whether the tool is Python, Ruby, C#, Docker, etc. Why would my lack of desire to do so when the tool is Ballerina be differentiating?
Identifying as user-of-toolname is different than identifying as toolname (and I actually prefer to minimize the former, too: when I'm dancing—contemporary or, less often these days, ballroom/swing, not classical ballet—I don't identify as a user of a particular brand of shoe, either.)
Regarding the identity thing: programmers like collective nouns.
What do you call a bunch of google employees? Googlers (and they self-identify with that label). The same thing goes for a bunch of companies.
What do you call the people at a go meetup? Gophers. Ruby meetup? Rubyists.
There's a bunch of collective nouns. In the software community, they particularly pop up around companies we belong to, and programming languages we use.
It's about 50/50 with programming languages really. A bunch of C programmers isn't a "Unit of Eunuchs", but a bunch of python programmers are a "Plethora of Pythonists".
Rust programmers are a "Corrosion of Rustaceans, but java programmers aren't an "Orientation of Objects".
Collective nouns are somewhat random, but I assure you that when the programming language name makes it easy to create them, they will be created. Ballerina makes it very easy any of a number of collective nouns to form, and they totally would if the language took off.
What do you call a bunch of google employees? Googlers (and they self-identify with that label). The same thing goes for a bunch of companies.
What do you call the people at a go meetup? Gophers. Ruby meetup? Rubyists.
There's a bunch of collective nouns. In the software community, they particularly pop up around companies we belong to, and programming languages we use.
It's about 50/50 with programming languages really. A bunch of C programmers isn't a "Unit of Eunuchs", but a bunch of python programmers are a "Plethora of Pythonists".
Rust programmers are a "Corrosion of Rustaceans, but java programmers aren't an "Orientation of Objects".
Collective nouns are somewhat random, but I assure you that when the programming language name makes it easy to create them, they will be created. Ballerina makes it very easy any of a number of collective nouns to form, and they totally would if the language took off.
You see a shoulder massage, I see someone giving support to and obviously nervous programmer :)
Granted though I can't see where the name is coming from.
Granted though I can't see where the name is coming from.
I read somewhere that the name originates from the graceful and seamless movements you see in a Ballet recital. The seamless integration and interactions of components in a distributed system is likened to that of a Ballet troupe.
Yeah, just seems like maternal guidance to me.
People nitpicking the gender of the programmer in a cartoon here is a great example of what I despise about modern tech discourse. The gender of the cartoon programmer isn't even that clear, it's so highly stylized. But I wonder if it was a woman giving another woman a massage instead, they'd be lambasted for pandering to the male fantasy of lesbianism.
People nitpicking the gender of the programmer in a cartoon here is a great example of what I despise about modern tech discourse. The gender of the cartoon programmer isn't even that clear, it's so highly stylized. But I wonder if it was a woman giving another woman a massage instead, they'd be lambasted for pandering to the male fantasy of lesbianism.
Well I see a Leanan sídhe sucking some mysterious lifeforce out of the programmer while "stimulating certain areas of his brain". I don't know what to make of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muse_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Spac...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muse_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Spac...
> how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas”
Ballerina -> Baller. Problem solved.
Ballerina -> Baller. Problem solved.
Couldn't even get the Examples page to open properly after 10minutes of wait on my phone... =D
On the upside, if it /does/ load, it's one of the stronger layouts for examples, well-annotated to introduce the concepts being explored, and not just slapping you in the face with a bunch of novel code you would struggle to interpret.
Also, the front page ends with a picture of someone massaging a programmer's shoulders.
I understand their idea, but that is not something to be expected by a ballerina
It’s a visual metaphor, the ballerina represents the language and they are supporting / comforting the programmer. I’d say its pretty corny, especially when a bunch of literal engineers need it explained to them, but it’s not just a random picture of a back rub
Intention and interpretation are different. People who have already had rough gender experiences in software might read this image differently than you.
What, you don't flirt with, date, and then conceive babies? What kind of timelord are you?
Always happy to see another language being born, especially one that's put together like this - assuming all of it works (have not yet downloaded or played with it, this is based on reading your website)
That said:
1. This is bikeshedding, but you cannot make a statement like "diagram is the code, code is the diagram" and not show how to actually do that. The home page even has a sequence diagram. If you meant that the written code looks like a sequence diagram if you squint, then say that.
2. What makes this a Perlis language? I knew every term in the by example summary [1]. Is it annotating functions as services with metadata, or in-language support for xml/json, websockets/http2, etc? How is that different from other batteries-included languages like wolfram, for example?
3. Related: the problem with a batteries included language is that it gets bigger and bigger over time; hence the idea of "small language, large library base". What will you do with the language when its usage pivots over time - add more batteries as standard?
4. Minor: Many links to GH on the community guide page [2] end in 404s.
[1] https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/by-example/ [2] https://v1-0.ballerina.io/community/
That said:
1. This is bikeshedding, but you cannot make a statement like "diagram is the code, code is the diagram" and not show how to actually do that. The home page even has a sequence diagram. If you meant that the written code looks like a sequence diagram if you squint, then say that.
2. What makes this a Perlis language? I knew every term in the by example summary [1]. Is it annotating functions as services with metadata, or in-language support for xml/json, websockets/http2, etc? How is that different from other batteries-included languages like wolfram, for example?
3. Related: the problem with a batteries included language is that it gets bigger and bigger over time; hence the idea of "small language, large library base". What will you do with the language when its usage pivots over time - add more batteries as standard?
4. Minor: Many links to GH on the community guide page [2] end in 404s.
[1] https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/by-example/ [2] https://v1-0.ballerina.io/community/
Here's what the spec [1] says about the sequence diagram aspect of the language: "[Ballerina's] abstractions and syntax for concurrency and network interaction have been designed so that there is a close correspondence with sequence diagrams. This enables a bidirectional mapping for any Ballerina function between its textual representation in the syntax described in this specification and its graphical representation as a sequence diagram, such that the sequence diagram fully shows the aspects of the behavior of that function that relate to concurrency and network interaction."
The two biggest things that are different about Ballerina in my view are the language abstractions for providing and consuming network services, and the correspondence with sequence diagrams.
[1] https://ballerina.io/spec/lang/2019R3/
The two biggest things that are different about Ballerina in my view are the language abstractions for providing and consuming network services, and the correspondence with sequence diagrams.
[1] https://ballerina.io/spec/lang/2019R3/
Can you share a sample of code, its equivalent sequence diagram, and how one is converted to the other please? I see that the samples have caller->method() style code, but how is this a sequence diagram? And where's the actual bidi mapping?
To be clear: I'm not critical; its good that ballerina attempts to bridge the visualization and the implementation. I'd like to see an actual sample, though.
Edit: Never mind, found the other poster who discovered your IDE plugin that shows the sequence diagram equivalent. Not sure how this is part of the language, though.
To be clear: I'm not critical; its good that ballerina attempts to bridge the visualization and the implementation. I'd like to see an actual sample, though.
Edit: Never mind, found the other poster who discovered your IDE plugin that shows the sequence diagram equivalent. Not sure how this is part of the language, though.
I've never heard of this language, but it looks like a cross between TypeScript and Java. The "Why Ballerina" points on the front page are intriguing, but none of the other materials seem to fill in the next level of detail. The diagram is the code... so this is a visual language? Where are the example diagrams? The language is built so that it's easy to access a service over a network? Tell me more. Show me something beautiful, dammit. The syntax isn't pretty. And why does every new programming language these days put "getting started" instructions above the fold, but not show you code or otherwise give you something concrete to latch onto?
I'm speechless at the sheer amount of documentation and tooling that already exists. Editor plugins, a code formatter, a style guide, a build tool, a doc tool, a package manager, a package repository, a language spec, a standard library, a framework for writing services, deployment guides, and maybe 200 example programs.
I am a major TypeScript fan and former major JVM fan, and I can see the appeal of mashing them up. I think my problem is that the front page is the only interesting page on the entire site, the only one that gives me some sense of why I might care about this obscure language, let alone use it.
I'm speechless at the sheer amount of documentation and tooling that already exists. Editor plugins, a code formatter, a style guide, a build tool, a doc tool, a package manager, a package repository, a language spec, a standard library, a framework for writing services, deployment guides, and maybe 200 example programs.
I am a major TypeScript fan and former major JVM fan, and I can see the appeal of mashing them up. I think my problem is that the front page is the only interesting page on the entire site, the only one that gives me some sense of why I might care about this obscure language, let alone use it.
There's a link to 'by example' docs at the top, next to download:
https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/by-example/
https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/by-example/
If that page has a single example with a diagram in it, I have yet to find it.
It doesn't. The primary reason is that VSCode cannot be hosted.
We will soon publish a playground widget which will let you run the same code in the browser so you can see source and the diagram as you wish (or not!).
We will soon publish a playground widget which will let you run the same code in the browser so you can see source and the diagram as you wish (or not!).
I've been programming in the Julia language for the past 4.5 years, and as somebody who has lived through the problems with Julia's name (getting incessantly teased by coworkers, friends, even my wife and kids, because of how much I like the Julia language and tend to gush about my enthusiasm for it), I think @StefanKarpinski really has hit the nail on the head here.
His suggestion of "Ballet" is very good, it still conveys all of the grace, elegance and beauty of ballet. Also, ballet dancers of all genders are pretty kickass athletes as well as incredible artists and performers.
Come to think about it, maybe I shouldn't recomend them changing from "Ballerina" to "Ballet", because if I came up with a new language, "Ballet" would definitely be pretty cool, and I'd want to use it myself!
His suggestion of "Ballet" is very good, it still conveys all of the grace, elegance and beauty of ballet. Also, ballet dancers of all genders are pretty kickass athletes as well as incredible artists and performers.
Come to think about it, maybe I shouldn't recomend them changing from "Ballerina" to "Ballet", because if I came up with a new language, "Ballet" would definitely be pretty cool, and I'd want to use it myself!
As a co-creator of a language (Julia) with a name that is feminine in most of the world, let me give some friendly advice regarding the name "Ballerina", which means "a female ballet dancer". The way you talk about Ballerina comes off rather tone deaf to gender issues. In the post linked here and elsewhere on the language website, the female ballerina—and she is definitely a she—is talked about as an object of grace and beauty to be appreciated by the programmer, who is presumed to be male. In one cartoon on the site, the male programmer is getting a massage from the helpful, friendly, female Ballerina while he does his programming work. And then there is language like this (pointed out by @yoz):
> That obviously starts with the Enterprise Integrator team as that is where this baby was flirted with, dated and then conceived
This is really damaging: the Ballerina in question is referred to as "baby", she is flirted with and then conceived—weird because that's an unusual order of events, but I guess this means you knocked her up and then had a baby with her? I can't continue, even dissecting this sentence feels creepy. Just don't do this. It's weird and disturbing and it will put off most women and many men who might otherwise consider using or contributing to your language.
Consider renaming the language to "Ballet", which is distinctly non-gendered and doesn't have these issues but still suggests the grace and beauty you are inspired by and aspiring to. Seriously, consider this. Yes, it's late in the game (post 1.0) and you like the name you have, but it's close enough to the current name that you won't lose much branding and you can keep the same nice logo that you already have.
If you are going keep the name Ballerina, you cannot sexualize the name and you should have a rule that others in the community not do so either. Julia has a specific rule in the code of conduct saying "do not sexualize the name of the project"—we didn't originally think we'd need to say that, but it turns out people just cannot resist saying creepy, sexual shit about anything they perceive to be feminine.
> That obviously starts with the Enterprise Integrator team as that is where this baby was flirted with, dated and then conceived
This is really damaging: the Ballerina in question is referred to as "baby", she is flirted with and then conceived—weird because that's an unusual order of events, but I guess this means you knocked her up and then had a baby with her? I can't continue, even dissecting this sentence feels creepy. Just don't do this. It's weird and disturbing and it will put off most women and many men who might otherwise consider using or contributing to your language.
Consider renaming the language to "Ballet", which is distinctly non-gendered and doesn't have these issues but still suggests the grace and beauty you are inspired by and aspiring to. Seriously, consider this. Yes, it's late in the game (post 1.0) and you like the name you have, but it's close enough to the current name that you won't lose much branding and you can keep the same nice logo that you already have.
If you are going keep the name Ballerina, you cannot sexualize the name and you should have a rule that others in the community not do so either. Julia has a specific rule in the code of conduct saying "do not sexualize the name of the project"—we didn't originally think we'd need to say that, but it turns out people just cannot resist saying creepy, sexual shit about anything they perceive to be feminine.
Thank you for your comments. Both the cartoon and the sentence you highlighted have been fixed. We want to create an environment where everybody feels welcome. Your rule about not sexualizing the name seems like an excellent idea.
Glad that feedback was useful. I know it’s not a thing to consider casually, but please do start a real discussion about changing the name to Ballet—deciding not to is a viable outcome, of course, but do have the discussion. It could save you a lot of trouble over time. Even if it seems too late, I think it’s one of those things that will seem in hindsight that it was actually very changeable at this point in time.
Ada was named after Ada Lovelace too. Many may not know that it was a woman's name (and of course few program in Ada; we certainly hope for a better outcome than that!).
I'm sorry but I cannot accept the argument that because its a feminine word its not an appropriate name for the language. Gender balance has been a problem for this industry and making it so all names are male so people won't feel bad to say they like it is ridiculous. I worked hard in WSO2 to create an open workplace for women and 30% engineers are women - so it is possible to make it better if you try hard. Isolating tech to male-only names is not the solution.
As James noted, I updated the blog I wrote (even though the words were not meant the way you presented them) to remove that offending bit. And indeed your points about incorporating "do not sexualize the name" are great and we'll put them into our terms of conduct.
I'm sorry but I cannot accept the argument that because its a feminine word its not an appropriate name for the language. Gender balance has been a problem for this industry and making it so all names are male so people won't feel bad to say they like it is ridiculous. I worked hard in WSO2 to create an open workplace for women and 30% engineers are women - so it is possible to make it better if you try hard. Isolating tech to male-only names is not the solution.
As James noted, I updated the blog I wrote (even though the words were not meant the way you presented them) to remove that offending bit. And indeed your points about incorporating "do not sexualize the name" are great and we'll put them into our terms of conduct.
There’s nothing wrong with a feminine name, just be aware of the issues. The name Ballet would avoid many of those issues outright, lessen the need to have such a rule, and seems like it might be a better name anyway—it’s shorter and phrases like “I love Ballet” and “we used Ballet” work. It’s your project, of course, it just seems a conversation worth having.
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> In Ballerina, every program is a sequence diagram that illustrates distributed and concurrent interactions automatically. The diagram is the code. The code is the diagram.
I'm not sure it's a feature I'm missing in current languages, but I sure am curious about this. Maybe "ballerina by example" should implement a toggle between diagram and code views?
I'm not sure it's a feature I'm missing in current languages, but I sure am curious about this. Maybe "ballerina by example" should implement a toggle between diagram and code views?
Given the end of your quote, what's to toggle between?
(I think it means that the code does clearly enough the interactions that you don't need a separate diagram, rather than that there's built in tooling to generate one, if that's the confusion.)
(I think it means that the code does clearly enough the interactions that you don't need a separate diagram, rather than that there's built in tooling to generate one, if that's the confusion.)
There actually is a built in tool to generate a sequence diagram. The language is designed with the idea that it should be possible to generate such a diagram for every program. The tool to generate diagram is currently part of the vscode extension for ballerina. It's documented here. https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/tools-ides/vscode-plugin/gra...
The way I read the docs though, it sounded like you could generate code from a sequence diagram - generating a diagram from code isn't that new or unique (albeit, still a handy feature!)
If you look at GP's link, you can see that the VSCode integration (perhaps others too) allows editing either the code or the diagram, and it's propagated to the other in real time.
I'm not certain it's unique, but it's pretty neat, and I can see how designing the whole language around servicing network requests would make it easier to implement / more reliably work.
I'm not certain it's unique, but it's pretty neat, and I can see how designing the whole language around servicing network requests would make it easier to implement / more reliably work.
Ah, cool! Then I agree, more example services showing code + diagram side by side would be great.
Every time a new programming language is announced, I go look at some of the example programs. This time I didn't even make it through "hello world" as I can't read the grey on very slightly lighter grey code.
Please, if the makers are reading this, just make it look like it does in your editor, when you're reading and writing it.
Please, if the makers are reading this, just make it look like it does in your editor, when you're reading and writing it.
Yeah sorry .. the styling on examples https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/by-example/ might be a bit much.
We'll work on it.
We'll work on it.
And then please add quick sample syntax example on the front page as well as an example video of what you mean by the sequence diagram is the code which if I understand correctly is the languages main differentiator.
Have you tested the site on mobile? The examples page seems oddly unresponsive on Chrome on my Android.
Also the comments. They are unnecessary in many places in the examples and distracting. It’s obvious that the piece of code is “return string to caller”. The comment is just noise.
We will do another pass on these examples pretty soon. Thanks for the feedback.
I played with Ballerina about 6 months ago. I wasn't able to sell it to my team, but I was extremely impressed. Type safety, brilliant Kubernetes deployment, and a very rich API for integration tasks made it appealing for 'glue code'.
If you're considering spending 5 mins to write a comment on why we don't need this language, please consider spending that time with their examples page instead. Its pretty impressive in breadth and depth.
I do think that the whole diagram bit is noise, and I could never really get it to work as expected in VScode. Its just a solid language for service development.
If you're considering spending 5 mins to write a comment on why we don't need this language, please consider spending that time with their examples page instead. Its pretty impressive in breadth and depth.
I do think that the whole diagram bit is noise, and I could never really get it to work as expected in VScode. Its just a solid language for service development.
Visual programming languages are great in concept until you actually start using them. Luna-lang, for example, promises so much but severely lacks in delivery. This claims to convert sequence diagrams to code, but is it really production quality? If not, is this purely for prototyping? Not that that's a bad thing. Honestly, these claims are all starting to sound very repetitive.
SCADE provides textual and graphical views that are synchronized and it's widely used in industrial critical embedded software such as airplane in airbus.
Why (do you think) is it only used there and hasn't made its way too the main stream (yet)?
Disclaimer: Huge personal hunch, might be down-voted to hell for writing this...
I think that languages like this don't go mainstream because people like/want to write code, and anything that does not help to actually write code is seen as an hindrance. The main feedback I've heard about this kind of tool is "it's clunky, it's a pain to write code with". Guess what ? It's a good thing IMO.
For this to go mainstream, the whole software industry would have to go through a major revolution by shifting its focus from "writing code" to "deliver a working product". We should acknowledge that "writing code" is one tool among others, and may be not even the primary one (I personally think that specification engineering is the most important one).
In the field of critical embedded software, this has happened that's why it took off.
Another clue of that is for instance the Event-B/Atelier B that is intensively used in the railway/metro world (Paris line 14 was made with it, 2 bugs found in 15 years). While doing B, you get a broad specification you refine along the way into smaller problems. Writing code is actually the last step you do, when you are sure that all pieces fit together.
I think that languages like this don't go mainstream because people like/want to write code, and anything that does not help to actually write code is seen as an hindrance. The main feedback I've heard about this kind of tool is "it's clunky, it's a pain to write code with". Guess what ? It's a good thing IMO.
For this to go mainstream, the whole software industry would have to go through a major revolution by shifting its focus from "writing code" to "deliver a working product". We should acknowledge that "writing code" is one tool among others, and may be not even the primary one (I personally think that specification engineering is the most important one).
In the field of critical embedded software, this has happened that's why it took off.
Another clue of that is for instance the Event-B/Atelier B that is intensively used in the railway/metro world (Paris line 14 was made with it, 2 bugs found in 15 years). While doing B, you get a broad specification you refine along the way into smaller problems. Writing code is actually the last step you do, when you are sure that all pieces fit together.
Learning how to write code isn't a significant barrier. It's just pressing buttons on a keyboard. Logical thinking and problem solving are far more important. Switching to a visual language doesn't actually help you with that. Worse, if clicking virtual buttons with a mouse is slower than pressing physical buttons you will waste mental capacity that could have been used for problem solving and logical thinking.
Logical thinking and problem solving can greatly benefit from visual representations and feedback. I write code but I often wish the representation was much more visual than lines of dense monospaced text with a little bit of colour. Diagrams are often easier to parse and reason about. When trying to understand difficult code or figuring out a difficult problem before writing code I generally draw diagrams with pen and paper. These diagrams are much closer to my mental model than code, and I wish that a lot more of this translation could be automated.
"Visual language" doesn't have to mean low-bandwidth interactions.
"Visual language" doesn't have to mean low-bandwidth interactions.
> more of this translation could be automated
It seems to me that when creating a visual programming language for a particular class of programs, you probably find that making this translator is the same hard mental work that would let you make a text-based programming language instead. Once you have a good mapping from thoughts to code, the visual part doesn't add much. I was talking to a non-programmer recently who had tried Scratch and gotten tired of the visual layer very quickly. It's rare to see a visual -> code mapping that retains value after you've used it the first time, i.e. value beyond teaching.
I like the general idea of going the other direction, from code to diagram. I'm not interested in editing the diagram, but it's great for reading the code and sanity checking. But it doesn't have to be the actual code. A great many projects would benefit from having a GraphViz generator instead of hundreds of printlns. I was talking today about adding a GraphViz .dot visualisation to the salsa-rs incremental computation database, because I was reading the documentation on garbage collection and just wanted to see it in action. I know the rustc folks have been doing this for ages.
I think in addition to generating graphviz, it would be cool to have a log viewer that can render it.
It seems to me that when creating a visual programming language for a particular class of programs, you probably find that making this translator is the same hard mental work that would let you make a text-based programming language instead. Once you have a good mapping from thoughts to code, the visual part doesn't add much. I was talking to a non-programmer recently who had tried Scratch and gotten tired of the visual layer very quickly. It's rare to see a visual -> code mapping that retains value after you've used it the first time, i.e. value beyond teaching.
I like the general idea of going the other direction, from code to diagram. I'm not interested in editing the diagram, but it's great for reading the code and sanity checking. But it doesn't have to be the actual code. A great many projects would benefit from having a GraphViz generator instead of hundreds of printlns. I was talking today about adding a GraphViz .dot visualisation to the salsa-rs incremental computation database, because I was reading the documentation on garbage collection and just wanted to see it in action. I know the rustc folks have been doing this for ages.
I think in addition to generating graphviz, it would be cool to have a log viewer that can render it.
$ my-program
normal logs
viz:"digraph {\n0 -> 1..."
more normal logs
^C
$ my-program | logviz
normal logs
more normal logs
> Once you have a good mapping from thoughts to code, the visual part doesn't add much.
Having the visual representation readily available is indeed "great for reading the code and sanity checking". Writing code (here meaning text or visual) involves reading code, both the code you're currently writing and anything that is connected to it. Thus the visual representation is also good for writing code.
I'm not advocating a low bandwidth interaction model. I can certainly see why some people might quickly grow tired of Scratch, but I'd argue that's a problem with the specific language/editor, not something that is universally applicable to anything that tries to go beyond "text". Structured editors can beat text editors in interaction speed.
Having the visual representation readily available is indeed "great for reading the code and sanity checking". Writing code (here meaning text or visual) involves reading code, both the code you're currently writing and anything that is connected to it. Thus the visual representation is also good for writing code.
I'm not advocating a low bandwidth interaction model. I can certainly see why some people might quickly grow tired of Scratch, but I'd argue that's a problem with the specific language/editor, not something that is universally applicable to anything that tries to go beyond "text". Structured editors can beat text editors in interaction speed.
Ballerina does NOT force you to write "visually". You can write normal code and NEVER look at a picture.
However, after you're done, if to see the flow of your entire program (not just one function) as a sequence diagram then you can get that done.
The language syntax is "normal" syntax and has all the power o a modern language. Try it and see- feedback welcome.
Disclaimer: I'm the one who started the project and leading it as the product manager now.
However, after you're done, if to see the flow of your entire program (not just one function) as a sequence diagram then you can get that done.
The language syntax is "normal" syntax and has all the power o a modern language. Try it and see- feedback welcome.
Disclaimer: I'm the one who started the project and leading it as the product manager now.
Then I'm struggling to understand the value proposition. If I did want to stick to implementing it visually through sequence diagrams, can I implement all the examples through a sequence diagram and have it run on Ballerina? Really curious. If yes, I'd really like to try it. There are no instructions/examples on doing that.
EDIT: I found a link to using the graphical editor in the comments here.
https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/tools-ides/vscode-plugin/gra...
EDIT: I found a link to using the graphical editor in the comments here.
https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/tools-ides/vscode-plugin/gra...
I would consider EE, video production and game development mainstream, all domains are heavier users of visual languages.
The only mature visual programming language I am aware of, DRAKON, has been used quite successfully : ttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON
Node-Red is a visual programming language and it is a joy to use.
Like other WSO2 stuff, Ballerina suffers from too many almost complete features.
As I see it, they can hire dozens of coders in Sri Lanka, but don't have a good product management team that can turn a 95% complete feature into a market-ready one.
As I see it, they can hire dozens of coders in Sri Lanka, but don't have a good product management team that can turn a 95% complete feature into a market-ready one.
I'm the founder of WSO2. I'm from Sri Lanka. We have 100s of coders from Sri Lanka (not dozens). I'm the creator of Ballerina. I'm now its product manager.
Ballerina is in its first GA release. Please elaborate on what features you see as "almost complete"?
And regards to your comment about WSO2's inability to produce market-ready products, we have 500+ customers from all over the world for our products. What do we need to become "market-ready"?
Ballerina is in its first GA release. Please elaborate on what features you see as "almost complete"?
And regards to your comment about WSO2's inability to produce market-ready products, we have 500+ customers from all over the world for our products. What do we need to become "market-ready"?
Well, I just took a cursory glance at the documentation. Ballerina looks like it would be perfect for a data processing pipeline we run, I thought I could try it out for prototyping a new processing step, and see how I liked it.
This first use-case I could think of involves XML processing. You have "native" xml types. Neat.
After reading the language spec, all the xml examples, and the documentation for the 'xml' and 'xmlutils' module, I have no idea how to read in a xml file and get an 'xml' value from it. I also don't know how to extract a record type from some XML, except by writing a manual mapper from the DOM node to the record.
The actual methods available on the 'xml' type seems kind of unfamiliar, even after working with XML in a lot of different languages. 'getName' and 'getElementName' seems to do the same thing for elements. For some reason. To determine the type of a node, you call 'getItemType'. But 'getItemType' does not document what happens with CDATA sections, document elements or document type elements. Why re-invent the wheel? what's wrong with getNodeName and getNodeType?
The 'slice' method is really weird. It expects numeric child indexes. I mean, you sometimes know the document order of the stuff you're working with, but that's not really XML-ish.
It looks like there's a lot of amazing work put into Ballerina, but I don't think I'll use it for this prototype.
This first use-case I could think of involves XML processing. You have "native" xml types. Neat.
After reading the language spec, all the xml examples, and the documentation for the 'xml' and 'xmlutils' module, I have no idea how to read in a xml file and get an 'xml' value from it. I also don't know how to extract a record type from some XML, except by writing a manual mapper from the DOM node to the record.
The actual methods available on the 'xml' type seems kind of unfamiliar, even after working with XML in a lot of different languages. 'getName' and 'getElementName' seems to do the same thing for elements. For some reason. To determine the type of a node, you call 'getItemType'. But 'getItemType' does not document what happens with CDATA sections, document elements or document type elements. Why re-invent the wheel? what's wrong with getNodeName and getNodeType?
The 'slice' method is really weird. It expects numeric child indexes. I mean, you sometimes know the document order of the stuff you're working with, but that's not really XML-ish.
It looks like there's a lot of amazing work put into Ballerina, but I don't think I'll use it for this prototype.
The XML design is going to get a significant refresh. The draft proposal is here: https://github.com/ballerina-platform/ballerina-spec/blob/ma....
The XML programming model is rather different from DOM and others for a lot of reasons. I hope reading this proposal will help.
The XML programming model is rather different from DOM and others for a lot of reasons. I hope reading this proposal will help.
Hi Sanjiva,
I'm impressed. Of the product, and that you have that many excellent Java coders in Sri Lanka. Didn't expect that.
Java really needs a safe structurally typed product. What are the major differences to Scala?
Java really needs a safe structurally typed product. What are the major differences to Scala?
This was exactly question in my mind as well when I saw Ballerina.
What are the major differences to Scala with Akka?
What are the major differences to Scala with Akka?
[deleted]
Why didn’t you expect that Sri Lanka has excellent Java coders?
Because I never heard of them. I heard of Bangalore and Gurgaon, but never Colombo.
Just check this out
"Sri Lanka comes in at number one in its preference for Java" source : https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-country-would-win-in-the-p...
"Sri Lanka comes in at number one in its preference for Java" source : https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-country-would-win-in-the-p...
> Yet, no current programming language lets you write your logic as a sequence diagram.
This is not a bad thing per se. If I make a diagram, I want to be able to understand it.
WTF is the sequence diagram for request hedging going to look like?
This is not a bad thing per se. If I make a diagram, I want to be able to understand it.
WTF is the sequence diagram for request hedging going to look like?
Perhaps not the best introduction when the site gets an "unresponsive script" pop-up on mobile Firefox.
I've been to several dozen technology conferences the past two years and these folks show up with a fancy large booth and nice swag and I'm simply amazed at the presentation and effort they've put into this undertaking.
My understanding is that the primary motivation all of this is consultancy work in India.
My understanding is that the primary motivation all of this is consultancy work in India.
I'm the founder of WSO2 which developed Ballerina. Also the person who started the project and lead it.
WSO2 is an enterprise software product company with 500+ customers in 70+ countries and 600 employees globally.
We promoted Ballerina like that because we are proud of the work we do and wanted to show it off to people. You may not like the work we produce but trying to say its to get "consultancy work in India" is rather racist.
WSO2 is an enterprise software product company with 500+ customers in 70+ countries and 600 employees globally.
We promoted Ballerina like that because we are proud of the work we do and wanted to show it off to people. You may not like the work we produce but trying to say its to get "consultancy work in India" is rather racist.
> I'm the founder of WSO2 which developed Ballerina. Also the person who started the project and lead it.
Congrats and thank you!
> We promoted Ballerina like that because we are proud of the work we do and wanted to show it off to people.
And rightly proud!
> You may not like the work we produce but trying to say its to get "consultancy work in India" is rather racist.
Saying it's to get "consultancy work in India" might be wrong (you promote Ballerina because you're proud of your work), but I fail to see how it's racist. Even if it was true, it wouldn't be racist.
Congrats and thank you!
> We promoted Ballerina like that because we are proud of the work we do and wanted to show it off to people.
And rightly proud!
> You may not like the work we produce but trying to say its to get "consultancy work in India" is rather racist.
Saying it's to get "consultancy work in India" might be wrong (you promote Ballerina because you're proud of your work), but I fail to see how it's racist. Even if it was true, it wouldn't be racist.
I think the racist bit might be assuming the primarily Sri Lankan company is from India.
It's a clever approach. Developers love to jump on new languages.
They do, this is why I would never bring a consultant on board who suggests a new language could solve the problems. Everybody loves it but after the easy 90% are done I am stuck with a niche language.
Thus, I am not sure that this marketing does not backfire.
Thus, I am not sure that this marketing does not backfire.
That is often true that one of the consultant I had could focus on solving some gaps and the overhead is too high.
One of the primary reasons, we need a general purpose programming language focused on both "better developer experience" and "flexibility" that would cover almost all ecosystems.
One of the primary reasons, we need a general purpose programming language focused on both "better developer experience" and "flexibility" that would cover almost all ecosystems.
I've had my eye on this for a while, it looks great! Co-designed by James Clarke (of SGML, DSSSL, and XML fame) and it uses XML as a built in native data type.
I don't do cloud stuff but I can't wait to give this a spin and see if there's any way I can use it to my benefit.
I don't do cloud stuff but I can't wait to give this a spin and see if there's any way I can use it to my benefit.
The absence of meaningful code samples on the front page, and the request that I install software on my computer to try a few lines of code, makes me highly doubt the future of this endeavour, outside of academia.
We had a playground widget but had to take it down because we were a bit swamped last few weeks and couldn't get it updated for this release.
A Go-like full screen online playground is coming.
A Go-like full screen online playground is coming.
I just need to say it. Thank you for putting types on the left.
> Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept.
This is now widely considered a terrible idea because it encourages software that doesn't conform to specifications, e.g. HTML's "quirks mode". https://i.stack.imgur.com/teQdv.png
This is now widely considered a terrible idea because it encourages software that doesn't conform to specifications, e.g. HTML's "quirks mode". https://i.stack.imgur.com/teQdv.png
This Internet Architecture Board draft was initially titled “Postel was wrong” https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-iab-protocol-maintenance
Liberal ≠ Malformed; an atrociously common misconception amongst atrociously common code.
The modern Web is the product of people who have so deeply and comprehensively misinterpreted and misunderstood every single facet that they are Not Even Wrong; then standardized, ratified, and protelyzed their own utter brokenness as The Right Way To Do It, and congratulated themselves on this marvellous job they have done.
Just Yahoos all the way down.
The modern Web is the product of people who have so deeply and comprehensively misinterpreted and misunderstood every single facet that they are Not Even Wrong; then standardized, ratified, and protelyzed their own utter brokenness as The Right Way To Do It, and congratulated themselves on this marvellous job they have done.
Just Yahoos all the way down.
If the performance is good and if network/service errors can be handled and recovered easily and gracefully, I might consider it.
https://v1-0.ballerina.io/learn/by-example/json-io.html
returns @tainted json
You should be, that is expected by the language. You are going to receive some untrusted data, be careful when you use them.
> Perl supported tainting from at least 1989 as the -T switch was included in Perl 3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taint_checking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taint_checking
Been following this language for a while now. Good to see them hit 1.0
Mods: typo in title
langauge -> language
langauge -> language
Good work
Another half baked wso2 product.
Could you please elaborate a bit, which part of the language you think half baked?
Can you execute OS exec with this language? I tried to do the integration with a legacy app and gave up.
I browse with JavaScript off, and I can't scroll on that site. Could you degrade it more gracefully, please? It's a documentation site, after all, not something that should be design heavy.
I created an issue for you https://github.com/ballerina-platform/ballerina-www/issues/1...
Can you give a more elaborative example like how to print the output of ls command? Not a half baked example.
BTW why is not there in the By Examples page?
BTW why is not there in the By Examples page?
Examples are there to teach how stuff works, you can't be a programmer by copy-pasting everything. Read. learn and do it yourself. Maybe you can push it to Ballerina central as a library :)
> That obviously starts with the Enterprise Integrator team as that is where this baby was flirted with, dated and then conceived;
This is what happens when people think that coding is hard but writing is easy.
WSO2: Please, on behalf of innocent eyeball-owners everywhere, hire a dedicated content editor.