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The read through of docs in their repo is interesting. They mention Pony several times as an inspiration because of it's type system's concurrency primitives. R

The read through of docs in their repo is interesting. They mention Pony several times as an inspiration because of it's type system's concurrency primitives. Rust and Cyclone are also mentioned. I've recently gotten over my dislike for Rust evangelism and started learning it. It's just too good of an idea to let internet BS and my propensity to hold a grudge stop me from learning. It's interesting that building a self-hosting environment is a stated non-goal. Sounds like they are really focused on research and not building a production toolchain, but who knows? I'm really interested in seeing where it goes. Not really my area but I'll probably spend a couple of nights playing around with it.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
The project is being done by MSR in cooperation with Imperial College (where Pony came from), and one of the Pony author’s works at MSR now, so I’m guessing this is by many of the people who worked on Pony.
- spooneybarger 7y ago
  You would be correct that many people associated with Pony have done work on Verona.
adamnemecek 7y ago
What rust bs is there?
- youdontknowtho 7y ago
  It was internet BS, not rust BS. Sorry if I wasn't clear. Cheers.
plietar 7y ago
(I work on Verona, originally as an intern at MSR, now as a PhD) > It's interesting that building a self-hosting environment is a stated non-goal. Sounds like they are really focused on research and not building a production toolchain, but who knows? The point isn't that the language will never be "production-ready" enough for it. It's that the language is intentionally limited in what kind of low-level hacks and concurrent mutation you can do, in order to remain safe. Writing this kind of code correctly is hard, and designing a language that exposes the full expressiveness in a sound and practical way is near impossible (at least given today's state of the art research). The Verona runtime is therefore implemented in C++, which does have these capabilities. In some future it would nicer to formally verify the runtime for correctness, but that's a lot of work.
- thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
  Reading through the GitHub repo, I see Rust, Cyclone, and Pony as idea sources, but I was surprised to not see Ada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)) or SPARK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language)). Both Ada and SPARK are mature, production-ready languages that have strong safety guarantees and concurrency built-in. SPARK in particular might be worth looking at for another idea source depending on Project Verona's goals and needs.
- youdontknowtho 7y ago
  Wow! Thanks for replying. That's a really good point. I'm looking forward to trying it. Cheers.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  So it doesn't have any kind of `unsafe` escape hatch like Rust?

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

The project is being done by MSR in cooperation with Imperial College (where Pony came from), and one of the Pony author’s works at MSR now, so I’m guessing this is by many of the people who worked on Pony.

spooneybarger 7y ago
You would be correct that many people associated with Pony have done work on Verona.

adamnemecek 7y ago

What rust bs is there?

youdontknowtho 7y ago
It was internet BS, not rust BS. Sorry if I wasn't clear. Cheers.

plietar 7y ago

(I work on Verona, originally as an intern at MSR, now as a PhD) > It's interesting that building a self-hosting environment is a stated non-goal. Sounds like they are really focused on research and not building a production toolchain, but who knows? The point isn't that the language will never be "production-ready" enough for it. It's that the language is intentionally limited in what kind of low-level hacks and concurrent mutation you can do, in order to remain safe. Writing this kind of code correctly is hard, and designing a language that exposes the full expressiveness in a sound and practical way is near impossible (at least given today's state of the art research). The Verona runtime is therefore implemented in C++, which does have these capabilities. In some future it would nicer to formally verify the runtime for correctness, but that's a lot of work.

thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
Reading through the GitHub repo, I see Rust, Cyclone, and Pony as idea sources, but I was surprised to not see Ada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)) or SPARK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language)). Both Ada and SPARK are mature, production-ready languages that have strong safety guarantees and concurrency built-in. SPARK in particular might be worth looking at for another idea source depending on Project Verona's goals and needs.
youdontknowtho 7y ago
Wow! Thanks for replying. That's a really good point. I'm looking forward to trying it. Cheers.
IshKebab 7y ago
So it doesn't have any kind of `unsafe` escape hatch like Rust?