Next Generation Shell Weekly Meetings, 30 Jan 2022

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From YouTube: NGS weekly meeting #16 - 2022-01-30

Description

Project website - https://ngs-lang.org/

[ Stars ]

NGS has reached 1K stars.

Python goto statement implementation has more stars than NGS or JIT for Ruby.

Goto for Python: https://github.com/snoack/python-goto

JIT for Ruby: https://github.com/tenderlove/tenderjit

[ Reddit discussions ]

Link to NGS - https://www.reddit.com/r/commandline/comments/sfz6q9/next_generation_shell_ngs/

Link to NGS - https://www.reddit.com/r/devops/comments/sfz6uv/next_generation_shell_ngs/

Naming convention - https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/s8e03v/naming_convention_question/

How to describe properties of a function - https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/sc7j5a/a_system_to_describe_properties_of_a_function/

A

Hello, welcome to weekly ngs meeting ngs stands for next generation, shell. It is a modern programming language for devops. uh Here we have uh ricardo, uh that's a contributor, uh I'm ilya, I'm the author of the project. uh Weekly meetings are about recent progress and future plans. Let's go so ricardo. Do you want to start or you want me to start.

B

um Yeah, I could start so this week. There was something happening, so lots of pull requests were approved. uh We have our new build system in place which builds for everything almost including.

A

B

And whatever not uh yeah.

A

So well, we actually added uh more distributions to our automated builds in github actions uh to make sure that ngs works on uh more platforms than before.

B

Yeah and along the way, we found an issue on ngs, which you fixed.

A

Yeah tell us about.

B

A

uh Yeah there was a build issue uh that was uh okay yeah. I also wanted to talk about that. Okay, so um a person is trying to port our ngs to uh turmoix, which is a program on android which uh apparently includes some linux environment in it, and um there was trouble compiling that, so that was fixed.

A

Let me share the screen.

B

A

B

The slackway one before the.

A

Slack where, where hold.

B

A

Okay, hold the second I'll share my screen. I already started with this then, uh but I did and the next one we'll do the um what you meant.

A

Okay, so we had this uh platform on turmoil ah yeah, I confused it: okay yeah! So while we are at e at it already, so there was a problem compiling on android that is solved. We are now waiting for the feedback uh from the author of the issue.

A

Okay and let's go see for a moment what we solved arc linux.

A

Where slack was.

B

On the build, I believe it was on the build.

A

Slackware, uh how do I find this now.

B

Actually looks not slack where actually.

A

Our clinics, okay, okay yeah, nobody.

B

But it was before that.

A

Our cleaners, yes, so.

B

It was just me so we had another one that was closed.

A

Let's switch to closed, oh that's close, and this is package.

A

So where do we have it.

B

Call it build search for build yum. I think it was together with build.

A

A

Okay, so we had a bug uh which was manifesting sometimes on some architectures. It was actually a stack smashing bug.

A

I fixed that, um can I add something here. No, I can't, uh but I have a screenshot which I will not be sharing, so what I did to fix it. um I run this in docker and reproduce the issue, and then I uh notice that it says core dumped, so I opened gdb and it actually gave me the function name in c in ngs, which was causing the issue, and then I just added some prints and uh you know it. Actually, it was sold like much faster than I thought.

A

B

So it was a cold issue.

A

Yeah, maybe an hour in total, you know with all the experiments and all that um yeah it was a real issue. Yes, I I just.

B

Made it more resilient.

A

Yeah well, we fixed crash. Yes, a potential crash.

B

It was interesting because it will we only could reproduce it with arch linux, with clank and apparently with old versions of ubuntu. That was also related right.

A

Yeah, I I removed all these guards, which were uh saying okay. This is that ubuntu and it crashes don't do this test, so I removed all this so now all the tests are supposed to run all the time.

B

So, interestingly enough right, some old ubuntu was displaying this issue. Then they stopped having this issue, and now it came back again with arch linux, clank and yeah.

A

Very weird, just.

B

To fix it finally managed to fix it, yeah good.

A

Yeah, so you see it's actually good to have to build on multiple platforms.

B

A

I discovered some stuff when I uh started compiling with uh ceiling in the beginning. I was using gcc at the time and then I added ceiling- and there was like oh warning- and you know all this stuff, okay, yeah, um so I'll stop sharing. So please continue.

B

Yeah, that was an important one and outside from that yeah it was just merging this. uh The website fixes we added websites, also dark team. This week, yeah.

A

Ricardo are the dark team for the website, so as soon as we deploy it, people will be able to enjoy dark team on our website.

B

A

Thank you yeah, so, actually ricardo uses it a.

B

A

I use um dark theme uh typically in the evening and somehow it doesn't work when you're like like when it's more light um so there's by the way, not.

B

A

Stuff on max, which is uh too dark team you need to like some programs, they have a standalone opinion about team yeah, not perfect, yet uh okay. So if you record the finished, we'll switch, yeah yeah.

B

We got that under the merge of the builds, and that was about it.

A

B

Guess this makes us very close to be able to do the release.

A

Yeah, actually I was about to ask: do you think we should release already yeah okay.

B

So the only the only other thing that could go together or not would be adding these builds of android there. But you know yeah this in this release we already added you know old, yams, all fedoras, and you know all arch linux and everything yeah.

A

I think you should not wait for that.

B

Yeah, we can also do this android afterwards, if we, if we can yeah yeah.

A

I don't think it's critical for the release. Okay good, so we will release soon now really soon, now, okay, uh so that uh yeah so uh yeah about the release thingy. I I actually uh have a question for you uh and do you think we missed something in the change log and maybe stuff that you didn't?

A

Was there anything that you did and didn't comment about that in the changelog.

B

A

Don't know I'm asking.

B

Yeah you should all of it. I never add to the changelog.

A

uh You should every time so.

B

You are actually.

A

You're actually invited to uh do that, and you know it's like looking more serious. You know more stuff done, especially.

B

That it was actually done. I just never really added anything to the changelogs.

A

You should okay, so.

B

I'll take a note that I asked okay.

A

So uh want to switch to my side.

B

A

A

um uh Yeah, so I wanted to go briefly over the closed issues. Maybe we forgot something over there um yeah and then we have a big chunk of okay. So we discussed this. We are also adding our clearance. Yes, dark team, yeah, okay, nothing more like interesting than that. Okay. So now um we will have now a big section of I would call it social. So what is happening around ngs?

A

First first thing: we are at 1k stars.

A

We achieved 1001 stars by today by the way we also today, because the thousand and thousand won um and I'll in the moment I'll share where I think they came from, but interesting, fun fact about stars: okay, uh how uh how not that much? They mean. Okay, let's um open! For a moment, a project um python go to okay, somebody added goto to python.

A

Okay. Apparently this is more interesting or useful than ngs as a wall, language, okay, it's 1.1, k! Stars! You see that so and on the other hand, there is this guy. Unfortunately, I forgot his name uh he's working on a jet compiler for ruby.

A

Maybe you can find it jit, ruby! It's it's popular guy.

B

Yeah yeah this one.

A

Dude for ruby- and it has what 355 stars apparently cheat compiler for ruby is less interesting than go to for python, so go figure.

A

So this so stars, then, let's uh see where I think they came from uh recently um uh some someone posted uh on reddit two links to ngs project. Let's see uh what is going on there, so we have in the command line reddit uh a post like this yeah somebody says they wouldn't use it at the work, because you know work stuff.

A

um They should well. I'm here are my opinions on that. Okay, uh well, you can write a non-critical pass or you can be stuck with your stuff and um or you can uh later be showed down you throw out when this is done by uh google, amazon or microsoft uh and uh okay, this person doesn't see a problem.

A

Okay doesn't see a problem with bash or whatever. Okay, I I would guess our target target audience would not be the people that don't have a problem, because why we would just solve problems which they don't have. So I hope that many people do think that there is a problem and um how do I know I'm not alone there? I think, uh judging by the number of projects which are doing alternative shells, I think uh there is something to it.

A

Okay, that's my opinion. Of course. There will be a uh people that are fine with bash and that's okay- I guess okay, so somebody tells something about zhang and don't see this ever catching on and stuff like that. Let's, let's see so.

B

That's very good.

A

It has to justify its own existence by saying russian python suck and aren't adequate, but this simply is not true. Bash is great, solid, scripted language, wow, okay,.

B

A

Bash's solid scripting language, I would classify more as a minefield which uh some people learned to to walk without exploding on the bombs, but okay, that is, it is an opinion still.

B

You know, okay, to be fair, to be fair, it allows you to call external programs, and then you can do things in the external programs.

A

uh Well it even at the at the domain of calling external programs, it sucks. Okay, it is much more convenient that, let's say python or other languages, but how about handling exit codes? Well bash, doesn't, if you do if in bash, okay, even simple example: you do if in bash, if then test, and then you, let's say test dash, f and file. Okay,.

B

A

Let's say it's in the middle of the script: okay: so this, if has two branches uh for yes and no, the problem with that is that uh the test command, which is also the brackets and bash and double brackets, the exit codes, are 0, 1 and 2.. That means that exit codes, 1 and 2 would go into the else. Branch x instead of exception on 2.

A

y2 is exception, because it's a syntax error, typically or some other kind of error. So if you don't watch closely the output of the script, you are screwed, it will just work incorrectly and that's because bash sucks at its own domain.

A

But, okay, that's an opinion.

B

They were, they were doing this long time ago, right so.

A

Yeah, that's fine, okay, so another link. Let's see what people are saying: okay, uh more upvotes! I guess how many people uh run on standard shells in production uh yeah. I guess not. Many okay, fish actually a fishes. uh I remember doing it for a client. They wanted the interactive use of fish and I installed that my scripts at the time were bashed. I was not switching to fish because, from my perspective, switching to fish is not that big of an improvement.

A

It is an improvement from my perspective is not that big of an improvement not enough to switch to something else, um what else yeah yeah and the parent person that is publishing. This also has a weekly newsletter, which I uh kind of need to be interviewed in and people just somehow don't like that. He said that he has this newsletter. I don't know anyhow, I I I'm struggling to understand why the downwards?

A

Okay- maybe I maybe it's- I don't know okay so another inter uh more positive things that happened already. So I was wondering about the naming conventions that I'm using uh the underscore convention uh pretty big discussion, so I will need to um actually there was a link here to a research but on the um zoom out labels. That would be.

A

uh It doesn't matter that much and other scores are kind of slightly more readable, but it's mostly what you're used to so I I I haven't finished reading the uh the research paper, but I think there will be not enough.

A

Incentive to switch so we are staying with underscores. I I I think, but I didn't finish reading okay. So there was a pretty big discussion. I'll put these links in the notes of the uh of the youtube video that we are making um yeah big discussion very interesting by the way and nice people- and you know uh they have. They have interesting perspectives on that. uh Another thing which happened uh recently is uh yeah.

A

I was wondering whether you can like describe uh not not the type of the function, but actually what it kind of does, because the type of the function would be like what are the parameter types and what is the result? Type, what is the returning type and how about we can like express more um about how the function operates. For example, filter function.

A

You should be able to describe that any resulting elements that are actually where are present in the input, and I'm not sure that well actually, here I need to read a bunch of links that they give and references.

B

Yeah but that's what yeah.

A

Yeah, so can we at type level yeah? I need to understand that uh yeah. So there will be a good thing. This amount of reading and all the stuff is not blocking anything on ngs just yet so we are good because it's apparently that will take time, everybody posts, you know links and systems and and whatnot, so also big discussion. Very, I think uh interesting happened, um and I think uh that would be it because we covered a few of the topics that I wanted to discuss.

A

While we were talking to you uh anything else, you think we forgot.

B

No, so we are ready for the release. I guess for this.

A

Yeah yeah, I'm not sure when I.

B

Will do it, but I hope, like in.

A

Next, ah you updated the what the changelog.

B

Changelog yeah, so it was just missing the website. The website update. That was the only thing missing. So the only.

A

Fields were already there, yeah.

B

You added already builds at least so I just added the change website update in the end of the.

A

B

And improvements area, okay,.

A

B

Okay, you added there the fix for the arch linux, so this uh this fix on the c plus plus size.

A

B

A

Crash yeah yeah.

B

Yeah yeah, okay, good yep awesome, so I guess it's all there, so the builds are also there. So you know we can at least release this version and then just focus on.

A

B

Big important thing, that is, the ui yeah.

A

Right which I'm kind of working on the uh on the uh io implementation uh based primary on neti, I think I'll be experimenting a bit. I need to think uh whether and how it could be simplified, because you know you can't just you know, take something from another language and just you know, dump it. You know it doesn't work that way. It needs to be very well integrated with the rest of the facilities of the language.

A

uh So I'll be thinking about that, but I I think I'm I'm quite impressed by by what nettie did it's not one? It's not of many projects where I am impressed by the way the other projects would be uh linux uh and uh vim that would I yeah and ids from jetbrains. Also very, um I think, powerful tools so from the for different reasons. But I I like, like very small amount of software, yeah beam, linux, jetbrains and nettie.

A

That would be roughly it.

A

Okay, so I guess we could finish for today uh how to say like and subscribe thanks for watching bye.

B

Thank you, bye.