40/ When I started writing a book on programming Hoon there was a very strong disagreement - the stance from the top was "if we call it a function, OR EVEN COMPARE IT TO A FUNCTION, people will be lulled into a false sense of security...so call it a "battery" so that
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51/ So, that was a lot of negative. On some positive (about the Hoon language): I do find a bunch of the experiments that Curtis did to be quite interesting, and there is a sort of artistic cohesiveness and simpleness to it that I appreciate. With good docs, I'd like it!
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52/ Nock is an interesting experiment in a minimal virtual machine, and I respect it for what it is. Hoon, OTOH, is a terrible language. There's the old quote "it is original and good...but what is original is not good, and what is good is not original." There's some of that
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53/ Every other programming language in the word uses keywords like "if", "then", "else", "try", "catch", etc. if you see code like if a==1 then print "equal" else print "unequal" end even a non-coder can figure this out.
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54/ Hoon does not use keywords. It uses an innovation - every thing that would be a keyword in a standard language is a "rune" (a two character sequence).
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55/ where standard languages would use GetType(0x12) Hoon uses !>(0x12) prounced "zaggar"...because there's a special pronunciation guide for runes.
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56/ so the "reserved keywords" of Hoon include things like =+ =< =/ =. =: ?: ?. ?+ ?& etc Reading code is just a vast pile of these runes.pic.twitter.com/pLPYFggJZI
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57/ Here's an example of some (pretty clean, very readable) Hoon https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/41ce22d6ae18678f9979f7ab5bef54f5c65fb6e7/pkg/arvo/sys/vane/gall.hoon …pic.twitter.com/V1zmeazjp1
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58/ Note how a lot of effort has gone into naming things so that all of the variable names h̵e̵l̵p̵ ̵c̵o̵n̵v̵e̵y̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵i̵r̵ ̵p̵u̵r̵p̵o̵s̵e̵s̵ are four letters long. call load scry take list skip move unit slog apps
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60/ Curtis is exceedingly smart, and is intellectually playful in both shape rotation and wordcelling. ...and that's awesome. ...but his ideas about "elegant" and "fun" and "better" have made Hoon 50x harder to learn than it needs to be.https://twitter.com/Fredosphere/status/1502328439289876486 …
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62/ So, on the topic of "hate", Roissy said that the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. I am angry at Hoon, not bc it means nothing to me, but because I WANT to love it, and I feel spurned. I tried hard to master it, and ... was 50% defeated by the docs.
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63/ ...and once I realized JUST HOW SIMPLE IT IS, I got very very angry. I hadn't been banging my head on understanding some deep mystery of the universe which is intrinsically hard - I had been banging my head on malevolent documentation designed to keep people out.
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64/ I didn't say "it surprised me". I said "it made me angry".pic.twitter.com/JpQDJBgpX6
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65/ Yeah, I was actually making notes for a Ruby-like language that could run in a written-in-Hoon interpretter.https://twitter.com/EricRichards22/status/1502334066166800385 …
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66/ That's great to hear that it's enjoyable! I last banged my head on Hoon ~3 years ago and I'd love to hear that the documentation & pedagogy has improved.https://twitter.com/pharkarpas/status/1502331332722053126 …
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67/ Yeah, I was soooo demoralized when I was trying to learn Hoon and nothing clicked...but then I realized that I'd ask questions - reasonable questions - and the answers were circular Once I got it, and wrote it up in decent documentation, folks could learn key bits instantlypic.twitter.com/1HqYLsLa8L
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68/ Phillip, the fact that I have data of something like n=15, where I explained Hoon core concepts in simple English and people GOT IT, IMMEDIATELY whereas they had tried and failed using Curtis / Tlon docs, is evidence that I'm right. >>>https://twitter.com/pcmonk/status/1502347516724973570 …
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69/ Also
@pcmonk, would you care to address my claims that TWO documentation people quit Tlon bc they were trying to write accessible docs, and they weren't allowed to? And my further claim that I received terribly negative feedback from cyg for my attempt at the same?Show this thread -
70/ bc my three factual claims * 2 doc writers quit * my n=15 experiment helped people a lot * cyg shit on this
attempt
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72/ 100% agreed. Curtis thought that docs written "his way" were best, and disagreed vehemently when folks tried to write docs that explained urbit concepts using existing terms for very very very similar concepts. This, I assert, was incompetent / badhttps://twitter.com/pcmonk/status/1502352677371478019 …
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73/ To be clear, I do not claim that CURTIS thinks gatekeeping is good. Curtis wants Urbit to be accessible to everyone, and has said [ in docs, I think ] that Urbit and Hoon are so simple that gradeschoolers can / should learn to program, using his pedagogic approach.https://twitter.com/DJSchreffler/status/1502353510456872962 …
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74/ I have heard two insiders - neither of them Curtis - say that high walls are good because they keep out normies. Curtis, in fairness, wants everyone to use Urbit / Hoon. ...and that's cool! Proper evangelical spirit !
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75/ And, again, my frustration w Hoon is not evidence that I think it's boring or bad or that I don't care - it's that I think it's good and interesting, but the community / company have unnecessary and bad self-sabotaging habits.
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76/ There is a third option: explaining concepts in a method other than cyclical definitions, keeping concept explanations and implementation details distinct, avoiding self indulgent side rants, using English keywords...https://twitter.com/pcmonk/status/1502354415079989250 …
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77/ Curtis is like the Confederacy: he can achieve secession, and all he has to do is keep his nature in check. ...but the Scots Irish needed a glorious attack on Fort Sumter, and Curtis needed to write docs like a slam poet.
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78/ YES!!!!!!! EXACTLY THIS!!!!!!!! Hoon is very very similar to lisp, just with absolutely terrible keywords, an absolutely terrible formatting (two distinct format types, actually!), absolutely terrible variable norms (two, actually!).https://twitter.com/kingdweeb_/status/1502354895147454467 …
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79/ so, here are some parts of Urbit that I think are good or at least interesting: * the virtual machine * the address system (galaxies, stars, etc.) * the cryptographic network between them
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80/ The terrible parts are all in Hoon: * runes * 'tall' and 'wide' code formatting * 'lapidary' (1 letter) var and 'normal' (4 letter) var names * malicious / incompetent documentation
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