redbar0n

पिछला माहdiscuss

What’s unique about Jam is that it tries to keep the ergonomics of a C-like language while enforcing safety without a garbage collector or lifetime annotations. Its main differentiators are owned bindings with automatic drop, no undefined or implicit zero-initialization, no first-class references, and a C-ABI-friendly design that aims to make safe code the default even at FFI boundaries.

Jam is trying to be a safe systems language with C-like immediacy, RAII-style cleanup, no lifetime syntax, no undefined, and low-friction C interop.

redbar0n

3 माह पहलेdiscuss

It's a bit ironic that the "Good fit" for "When High Level Rust Makes Sense" lists all the use cases where someone would typically _not_ reach for Rust, and "Not a fit" lists all the use cases for when people _would typically_ consider Rust.

redbar0n

3 माह पहलेdiscuss

I think it's because majority of people using Rust come from C++ where the devx is way worse. But I think what pulls down the devx is the perceived steep learning curve, plus lifetimes.

redbar0n

3 माह पहलेdiscuss

Crystal's issues list 785 open issues tagged as bugs, as of today, 16. april 2026: https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/issues?q=state%3Aope...

Is that normal? Or does someone just really need to close some stale bugs?

redbar0n

4 माह पहलेdiscuss

Just remember Rob Pike's 1st rule: don't assume where bottlenecks will occur, but verify it.

redbar0n

7 माह पहलेdiscuss

How could CSS (or any language) have been designed so that these mistakes could have easily been corrected today in any case?

If the mentioned mistakes or similar language design mistakes were made. Because mistakes will always be made.

(Unison lang comes to mind but it’s refactor failsafe seems narrow. How about: Antifragile language design? Self-correcting language?)

redbar0n

7 माह पहलेdiscuss

x = x + 1

always annoyed me as a syntax for binding, when first learning programming, coming from using = in equational reasoning in mathematics.

x: x + 1

would have been more natural as assignment/binding, imho.

redbar0n

7 माह पहलेdiscuss

In two concepts: syntactic sugar vs syntactic vinegar.

redbar0n

10 माह पहलेdiscuss

I did not dismiss speech’s potential to cause hurt feelings, I acknowledged and affirmed it. It is not to be taken lightly. Yet, we need an effective demarcation between speech and physical action, where resorting to physical action is deemed even more severe than words. So which one do you propose?

redbar0n

10 माह पहलेdiscuss

I am not arguing that terms cannot be used in broader or more expansive or even metaphorical meaning. But I am arguing that the accuracy/essence of the term «violence» ought to be respected. Especially because diluting it (i.e. washing out the border of it) can have such disastrous consequences.

There should be a very clear line between saying something and using physical force. So if you think the term «violence» isn’t a part of defining that line (or even the terms «attack», «aggression», «force», «assault» etc. which you seem willing to use to describe speech), then I am eager to hear what term(s) you propose to uphold that distinction?

redbar0n

10 माह पहलेdiscuss

The fact that the Wikipedia page on «verbal abuse» has to use «verbal» as a prefix term to the terms «abuse», «violence», «assault» etc. actually underscores the point: If those terms were obviously verbal in nature, then «verbal» wouldn’t have been needed as a prefix to them.

redbar0n

10 माह पहलेdiscuss

Why would you even need to say «call for violence» if speech were violence in itself?

No one is opposing the fact that speech can be used to call for violence, but that doesn’t make the speech itself violence. The speech part of it is the «call for» or «incitement to» or even «lead to». But we must not mix up cause and effect.

redbar0n

10 माह पहलेdiscuss

Distinguishing speech from violence is not to dismiss the potential for speech to cause hurt feelings.

redbar0n

10 माह पहलेdiscuss

From each except the first: - «force, assault» - «action» - «an act of aggression»

Which stands in contrast to «speech».

Though any expression can be used in a broader sense than what it essentially/accurately signifies. Some such examples are of course included in dictionaries, without taking away from the point (what they list first and their general primary agreement: that violence is physical force).

I hope we can agree how dangerous it is to wash out the meaning of the word «violence», and conflate it with «speech». Especially all the while people are being killed (subject to violence) for their speech by other people who justify it by saying that they were responding in kind (eye for an eye) because they deemed their mere words to be actual violence (physical harm) too.

redbar0n

10 माह पहलेdiscuss

The post could have been called «The Unexpected Woes of Scalability: Few in-betweens».

redbar0n

10 माह पहलेdiscuss

You should look up the definitions of the word «violence».

You seem to be using violence figuratively (synonymously with ‘injustice’), but ignoring it’s essential and accurate definition.

Both Britannica, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries, as well as the etymology of the word agree that «violence» means the use of «physical force».

redbar0n

2 वर्ष पहलेdiscuss

`bend` is a convenience syntax that "just creates an in-place recursive function, immediately calls it with an initial state, and then assigns the end result to a local variable" ... "in a single statement, rather than needing to name a separate external auxilliary function that you'll only use once", according to the original author on Twitter: https://x.com/VictorTaelin/status/1791964640533958924 and https://x.com/VictorTaelin/status/1791996185449791932

But contrary to this, I think explicitly separating function declaration and function calling, in the following kind of syntax, would make it much clearer and less complected where the initial condition `tree = fork(0)` comes from. In the original example it came from `bend x = 0`, but here the function declaration is separate and the call more explicit: so it more obviously comes from `createTree(0)`:

    type Tree
      Branch { left, right }
      Leaf { value }

    def main():

      createTree(x):
        x < 3 ?
          Tree.Branch { left: createTree(x+1), right: createTree(x+1) }
        Tree.Leaf { value: 7 }

      createTree(0)

Besides not needing a local variable `tree` here, the unique thing here is the elimination of the else-clause, to reduce unnecessary nesting, and a rule that the language just early returns the last result of any nested condition. If it doesn't go into any nested condition, then it just returns the last result in the main function body (like Ruby). Without any `return` keywords needed in either case. Wouldn't this be quite beautiful?

Submissions

Jam – Programming Language (C-like, safe, no lifetime syntax)

The Case Against the Nuclear Atom

The One-Step Trap (In AI Research), by Richard Sutton

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