standing on the shoulders of giants

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Ruby on Ales, Bend, OR

Ryan Davis, Seattle.rb

@the_zenspiderx1

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Setting ExpectationsSorta a history talk. Le Sigh.

Very Little Code.

Ideas/Survey Talk.

119 Slides, 3.4 SPM2

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Teetotaler for ~20 years

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Until…4

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Madison Ruby 2012

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Whisky & Cheese Pairing

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Thanks Big Tiger

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Thanks Big Tiger

Bite Me Ryan

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Current Diet8

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My Liver?9

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Ain’t got time to filter

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Thanks Josh

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I’m a bit Toasty

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"we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.”

Bernard of Chartres, 12th century

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"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.”

Isaac Newton, 1676

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(meta: we ALL stole the talk

title, zzak!)16

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In Other Words17

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Not a new concept, at all

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Newton was

iterating19

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Simple Idea20

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Idea21

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Begs the

question22

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WTF, Language?

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Ruby24

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RubyCreated by Matz in 1993

Interpreted File-based “Scripting” System.

Purely Object-Oriented Class-based Runtime.

Incredibly Complex Syntax & Semantics.

Extensive Class Library, Numeric Tower, etc.

Designed for “Developer Happiness”.25

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Fibonacci

class Integer def fib self < 2 ? self : (self-1).fib + (self-2).fib end end

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Ruby History

1981 - 1990

1981 1983 1985 1987 1989

1991 - 2000

1991 1993 1995 1997 1999

2001 - 2010

2001 2003 2005 2007 2009

2011 - 2020

2011 2013 2015 2017 2019

Feb 1993: Birth

Dec 1995: Ruby 0.95

Dec 1996: Ruby 1.0

Dec 1998: Ruby 1.2

Aug 1999: Ruby 1.4

Aug 2000: Ruby 1.6

Aug 2003: Ruby 1.8

Dec 2007: Ruby 1.9

Feb 2013: Ruby 2.0

Dec 2013: Ruby 2.1

Dec 2014: Ruby 2.2

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Ruby History

1981 - 1990

1981 1983 1985 1987 1989

1991 - 2000

1991 1993 1995 1997 1999

2001 - 2010

2001 2003 2005 2007 2009

2011 - 2020

2011 2013 2015 2017 2019

Feb 1993: Birth

Dec 1995: Ruby 0.95

Dec 1996: Ruby 1.0

Dec 1998: Ruby 1.2

Aug 1999: Ruby 1.4

Aug 2000: Ruby 1.6

Aug 2003: Ruby 1.8

Dec 2007: Ruby 1.9

Feb 2013: Ruby 2.0

Dec 2013: Ruby 2.1

Dec 2014: Ruby 2.2

What Happened?

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Ruby 1.0 Shipped with Almost Everything

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Not Much Added Since 1.0Private/Protected (~1.1)

Class Variables (1.6)

Encodings (1.9, 2.0)

frilly syntactic sugar (that doesn't really improve much of anything) (1.9+)

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Ruby is a fantastic language, but it could be

better.30

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Smalltalk

Lisp Perl

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COLASelf

Smalltalk

Lisp Perl

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Smalltalk Self

Scheme/Racket FONC/COLA

TooCoolfor

Logos?

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& Many More34

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Smalltalk35

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Brief summary of SmalltalkBy Alan Kay & Dan Ingalls at Xerox PARC, created in 1972. Publicly released in 1980.

Bytecode Compiled Image-based System.

Purely Object-Oriented Class-based Runtime.

Incredibly Simple/Clean Syntax and Semantics. Only 6 keywords, 4 precedence levels.

Fully Immersive development environment.

Incubator for Ideas: this is where many ideas of OO, patterns, mvc, etc came from.

WAY ahead of its time. Still is in some ways.

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Fibonacci

!Integer methodsFor: 'benchmarks' stamp: 'jm 11/20/1998 07:06'! fib ^ self < 2 ifTrue: [self] ifFalse: [(self-1) fib + (self-2) fib] ! !

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Self38

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Brief summary of selfDavid Ungar & Randall Smith started at Xerox PARC and finished at Sun in 87.

Bytecode Compiled + JIT Image-based System.

Purely Object-Oriented Classless (aka prototypes) Runtime.

Incredibly Simple/Clean Syntax & Semantics. 8 bytecodes. EIGHT.

Fully Immersive development environment.

Incubator for Ideas: java hotspot was born here.

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Fibonacci

fibonacci = ( <= 1 ifTrue: [ self ] False: [ predecessor fibonacci + (- 2) fibonacci ])

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Scheme & Racket

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Brief summary of schemeBy Gerald Sussman & Guy Steele in 1975.

Scheme is a minimal variant of a lexically-scoped Lisp.

Lisp is a functional language based on lists.

Innovation Galore: Tail Call Optimizations, Numeric Tower, Hygienic Macros, 1st class continuations, etc.

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Brief summary of racketBy Matthias Felleisen & PLT Cohort.

Racket is a maximal variant of Scheme. Huge incredibly diverse library.

Bytecode Compiled + JIT File-based System.

Mostly functional multi-language Runtime.

Simple Syntax & Semantics w/ rich expressions like extensive macros & structural matching.

Ships with Editor & Runtime.

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Fibonacci

(define (fib x) (if (< x 2) x (+ (fib (- x 1)) (fib (- x 2)))))

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COLA45

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A Tiny, Beautiful

Kernel46

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In the theme of this talk, we are coming back around to Alan Kay

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Brief Summary of VPRI Viewpoints Research Institute (VPRI) is Alan Kay's thinktank

5 year NSF grant to work on FONC: foundations of new computing

Project: STEPS (STEPS Toward Expressive Programming Systems)

They want a whole system that can be understood by one brain

Entire system, from language to GUI Apps, in ~20kloc.48

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Brief Summary of COLA Machine Compiled File-Based System.

Object Oriented Prototype-based Runtime.

Incredibly Simple/Clean Syntax & Semantics. (notice a pattern?)

COLA = Combined Object/Lambda Architecture.

“designed to be the simplest possible language which can be described in itself"

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Fibonacci

Integer fib { ; lispy (if (< n 2) n (+ (fib (- n 1)) (fib (- n 2)))) }

Integer fib [ ; smalltalky ^ self < 2 ifTrue: [self] ifFalse: [(self - 1) fib + (self - 2) fib] ]

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Time to Plunder!

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Time to Plunder!

Yarrrrrr

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Ideas from Smalltalk

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Squeak Smalltalk generates and builds itself.

Smalltalk

New VM

Smalltalk Subsetto C translator

VM written inSmalltalk Subset

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Extensive Hierarchy of Classes

54…lots more…

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Developer Tools!55

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Integrated Debugger

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Implementors & Senders Browser

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(and a lot more)60

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#inspect actually useful# smalltalk: >> Color lightRed darker => (Color r: 0.92 g: 0.736 b: 0.736) >> (Color r: 0.92 g: 0.736 b: 0.736) => (Color r: 0.92 g: 0.736 b: 0.736)

# versus ruby: >> Color.new(0.92, 0.736, 0.736) => #<Color:0x007fad5114c458 @r=0.92, @g=0.736, @b=0.736>

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Ideas from Self

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This was the birthplace of JIT.

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Self is the reason why Java & Javascript

are fast64

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Dynamic languages CAN be fast.

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Prototyping66

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Influenced Javascript & IO

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Prototyping is Handy!class Object def define_method name, &b self.singleton_class.send :define_method, name, &b self end

def clone_method obj, name define_method name, &obj.method(name) end end

class X; def to_s; self.class.name; end; end class Y; def to_s; self.class.name; end; end

puts X.new # X puts Y.new # Y puts X.new.clone_method(Y.new, :to_s) # Y??

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Developer Tools!69

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Ideas from Scheme & Racket

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Visual Stack Traces

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Structural Pattern Matching

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Multiple Language Support

#lang scribble/manual @title{My Library} Welcome to my documentation: @racket[(list 'testing 1 2 3)].

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OO is good for organization, scoping,

and data hiding82

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But…83

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lambda is king

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lambda is king

𝞴👑

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Speed Comparison% racket fib.rkt '(0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13) cpu time: 13 real time: 13 gc time: 0 cpu time: 22 real time: 22 gc time: 0 cpu time: 35 real time: 35 gc time: 0 '(832040 1346269 2178309)

% ruby fib.rb [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13] user system total real 30 0.230000 0.000000 0.230000 ( 0.237727) 31 0.390000 0.000000 0.390000 ( 0.389832) 32 0.600000 0.010000 0.610000 ( 0.602819)

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17x faster86

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Tail Call Optimization

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Ideas from COLA

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STEP’s vision of computing is massively

powerful89

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Debian Mac OS X

Windows Vista FreeBSD

Open Office GTK+ v2

Ruby electromagnetism

283 million lines of code 86 million lines of code 50 million lines of code 9 million lines of code 10 million lines of code 650 thousand lines of code 1.2 million lines of code 4 lines of code

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Combined Object/Lambda Architecture

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Objects for storage and organization

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Lambdas for execution

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Objectsfor

Storage

Lambdasfor

Execution

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string "lookup"_vt

symbol

string "addMethod"_vt

symbolstring "allocate"_vt

symbol

string "delegated"_vt

symbol

string "intern"_vt

symbol

--datalookupmethod

_vtclosure

--dataaddMethodmethod

_vtclosure

--datadelegatedmethod

_vtclosure

--dataallocatemethod

_vtclosure

--datainternmethod

_vtclosure

parentvalueskeys

4size_vt

vtable_vt

--parentvalueskeys

5size--_vt

SymbolList

parent--values

keys --0size

_vtclosure_vt

parent--values

keys --0size

_vtobject_vt

parentvalueskeys

1size_vt

symbol_vt

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Nile (graphics language) Source

Nile to Nile AST

Nile AST

Nile AST to Nothing

Nothing Code

Nothing to N-AST

N-AST code

Nothing to x86

OMeta: Translators all the way down

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Define your system using basic axioms.

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Teach the GUI Euclid’s geometry and give it a rule

engine99

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650 kloc gtk GUI library <

Rules + Euclid in ~250 loc100

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Runtime101

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MUCH smaller102

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Much more understandable

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Much more maintainable.

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Ruby’s 1.3 mloc <

STEPS’ 20 kloc105

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👋Hand Wavey?106

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TONS of Rich Info Here:

http://vpri.org/html/writings.php

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Conclusion

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Surveyed a minority of ideasself-bootstrapping implementations

extensive collection / magnitude hierarchies

instance-based inheritance

JIT compilation

Importance of lambdas & Tail Calls

object level pattern matching

the combined object/lambda architecture

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Ruby is at its best

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Borrowing great ideas

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From other languages

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It has fallen behind

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Lost its way114

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It's time for ruby to step up

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do more with these ideas

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keep pushing forward

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to stand upon the shoulders of giants

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Thank You

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