Post 9piWRFgjr1JtabVdLs by fr33domlover@todon.nl
 (DIR) More posts by fr33domlover@todon.nl
 (DIR) Post #9mzGmkPo6EFoEwwk0u by cwebber@octodon.social
       2019-09-16T15:54:18Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Here is a big fight I am going to have to make with myself ahead.  And actually, I can use community input.The current plan for Spritely has been for me to use the tools I am writing in Racket.  I've been very happy hacking in Racket personally and the tooling is coming along.However, I am duplicating work that the Agoric folks are doing in making an ocap secure substrate rich enough to do this stuff: https://agoric.com/Except... their stuff is in Javascript. (cotd ...)
       
 (DIR) Post #9mzGmkddGpJSvpPmYy by cwebber@octodon.social
       2019-09-16T15:56:07Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       I had a conversation with Mark Miller while at RWoT.  Should Spritely be written on top of Agoric?  From a duplicating work standpoint, probably.Except I don't like working with Javascript!  I'm a known lisp enthusiast.  And I'm not very productive unless I'm happy in my hacking environment.But MarkM pointed out that Agoric has worked on Jessie, a subset of Javascript that is closer to Scheme: https://github.com/Agoric/Jessie (Not entirely, but it is more beautiful)(cotd ...)
       
 (DIR) Post #9mzGmkroQ6ehdo36fI by cwebber@octodon.social
       2019-09-16T15:57:42Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Now one possible solution is to just build a lisp-like syntax on top of Agoric's Jessie.  Then I'd probably be happy enough!  And that may be less work than duplicating work in my Racket ecosystem, even if it seems silly.  Plus it means that non-lisp users could easily contribute to the system.But... it's a pivot.  I'm hesitant about making another pivot.  But it's probably the right one?  I'm unsure.Community feedback welcome.
       
 (DIR) Post #9mzGml8TQ9z0TTqPdQ by Tryphon@mastodon.social
       2019-09-16T16:28:42Z
       
       2 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @cwebber my 2¢ is that you should stick to the tools you love. You don’t want to be less excited about your project (or even someday start dreading that work) because it’s JavaScript.Also, I don’t believe that Racket/LISP is such a high barrier to entry, compared to the difficulty of the subject (security, distributed/decentralized systems, etc)
       
 (DIR) Post #9n07oX8tiHfhE1m2eu by zenhack@mastodon.xyz
       2019-09-17T03:32:29Z
       
       2 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @cwebber a couple thoughts, maybe just making the indecision worse, and giving you other tempting yaks to shave:I bet a lisp designed to interop really well with js  would resonate with a lot of folks as it's own projectIsn't part of the point of Jessie to make it easy enough to implement for it to go other places? I haven't looked at the spec enough to see how far they take that, but being able to do `#lang jessie` and then call agoric's stuff from racket would be cool.
       
 (DIR) Post #9piWOCtzkyci4zG3H6 by cwebber@octodon.social
       2019-09-16T15:59:46Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Agoric, for instance, probably has built almost all the right infrastructure to build and trade stamps immediately.  And it's being built by the experts in the field.Damn, I've really had a lot of fun working on Goblins and I think it's a really interesting infrastructure.  I don't really want to throw all that away.But we're in early enough stages there to where I could do it.
       
 (DIR) Post #9piWODQbnii9i8W66q by elmiko@mastodon.technology
       2019-09-16T16:27:36Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @cwebber at some level it kinda sounds like you have a decision between going more mainstream but sacrificing some passion for the language technology, as opposed to keeping the language passion high but suffering some on the collaboration aspects.no proposed solution here, just wondering if i am reading the situation correctly?
       
 (DIR) Post #9piWOEHmc1FIN3OYzY by cwebber@octodon.social
       2019-09-16T16:30:38Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @elmiko I think that's probably accurateA lot of this is driven by my personal excitement/passion though, hence why I think that my ability to take it on in JS is predicated on having a lispy interface to it :)
       
 (DIR) Post #9piWRFgjr1JtabVdLs by fr33domlover@todon.nl
       2019-09-17T09:21:12Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Hey @cwebber ! I've been facing a similar situation, except with other languages. I'd say, stick to the tools you love using. Will JS be the only language to have that OCAP stuff?? Or will we gradually make these tools available in other places? I write in Haskell the missing tools I need along the way. It makes my path a bit longer (the worst part is I spent long painful months on implementing JSON-LD in a pure functional manner, and not even using it yet :P but that's an exception, mostly the side projects are small and go well) but it lets me use and evolve the tools I enjoy using.Is Racket a barrier to contributions? I'd happily learn Racket to participate. People often tell me I shouldn't have chosen Haskell because it's harder to learn and less popular than some other languages. But even when I look for help with projects in Go or Ruby, nobody comes. I'm just taking the "make your own kind of music" (hmm reference to non-free-culture song) route, and trying to enjoy the work I'm doing ^_^
       
 (DIR) Post #9piWTcFAxrcK7gkCIa by alcinnz@floss.social
       2019-09-16T19:16:21Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @cwebber What sort of code would you be duplicating? It could be the case it's good idea to express these ideas in multiple languages.Personally I think JavaScript is an alright language (even if I dislike it's main use), and while I haven't tried a lisp yet I'm really loving Haskell now.