Talks to Watch

The Next Programming Language - Douglas Crockford - code::dive 2022

55K views · Dec 13, 2022 · 52:34 · 0 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2023

Douglas Crockford's code::dive 2022 talk on what the next programming language should look like. He presents ideas behind his Misty language, including message-passing actors.

Why Hacker News points people here: HN cites it as Crockford's main explanation of Misty and his take on the actor model.

“had explained in his famous talk”HN comment, 2023

What Hacker News said 3

Cites itjustin66Jan 2023

Crockford as torchbearer for the Actor model.

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> Who is left to carry the torch to illuminate millions of developers who have no idea or have never heard of the Actor model? Douglas Crockford. this video

Cites itzoogenyNov 2023

“see this recent video from Crockford on his new Misty programming language”

Crockford on Misty language and message-passing actors.

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I have been watching Elixir YouTube videos pretty much every day for the last few weeks. I guess there was an Elixir conference recently and after I watched a couple, YouTube has been sending me a consistent stream of Elixir content. I really want to try out this language. I love the idea of Erlang but the few times I've had to deal with it (an ejabberd chat server was one) I found it to be a bit too quirky. Every video I've seen with Joe Armstrong leads me to believe he was an under-appreciated genius. Isolated processes and message passing (Actors) seem a good candidate for the future of distributed programming (see this recent video from Crockford on his new Misty programming language [1] - notice how the questions were about Elixir/Erlang). I love pattern matching and elixir uses this to a high degree. However, I am not 100% sold. Clearly this community punches above its weight, and the BEAM is obviously no slouch and is a brilliant choice for a platform to build upon. But I get concerned looking at the magic of LiveView (and LiveBook). My experience is that if something sounds too good to be true, it often is. A lot of the jargon is also totally unfamiliar to me - things like GenServers and other esoteric kinds of platform specific knowledge. It feels like stepping into a one-way portal, I'm not sure any knowledge in that universe is transferable. There is a huge risk in niche languages and platforms. Hard to hire for, hard to find libraries for, hard to find blogs/tutor

Cites itbrabelDec 2023

“had explained in his famous talk”

Crockford's talk explaining the Misty language ideas.

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This is the spec for the language Douglas Crockford (author of the book "JavaScript: The Good Parts", the JSON specification[1], JSLint[2]) had explained in his famous talk: "The Next Programming Language"[3]. The "big things" in the language are the Actor model, favouring immutability and capabilities-based security. Presumably, there will be a flashy website later that actually motivates why you should use this language and what's cool about it. Notice this looks similar to the JSON spec website[4]. [1] link [2] link [3] this video [4] link