Looking for a business partner in hi-tech

[Boris Rarden]

Hi,

I have been working with a new programming language called Pliant, that I would like to take to the next level, and run a business based on it -- the idea to go farther and faster than with other technologies, in due time. This is a little like Rearden Metal -- it is very versatile but its benefits will become clear once a business is setup with a real client. If you either want to invest, or you are a solid developer willing to try new things, drop me a line.

Thanks,

Boris Rarden

[Prometheus98876]

This is the first I have ever heard of this "Pliant" programming language. The main site will not work for me right now, and the other sites I can find give me precious little information. What is so great about this language and why would anyone care so much? What about it justifies setting up a business around it? Historically, this sort of thing has been tried : But it has been proven time and time again that it generally doesnt work.

Programming languages are themselves generally not what makes profit, what makes profit is the great software which can be profitably made with them. What is it about Pliant that lets you do this?

" This is a little like Rearden Metal -- it is very versatile but its benefits will become clear once a business is setup with a real client." - if you mean it is superficially like Rearden Metal - then sure. Both are things which were claimed to have a lot of promise, even though not everyone sees why or buys into it. Except Rearden Metal clearly shows promise upon examination by a rational and informed person. I am not sure that this is the case here.

[Boris Rarden]

The technical website about pliant is http://www.fullpliant.org

pliant is a language that aims to replace C++.

Just like the benefits of C++ are visible only on large projects (on small you can use scripting) same goes for Pliant. Only a large consistent project will show clear benefits of using pliant (extensibility, expressibility, strong libraries, minimal code, high abstraction, low level optimization)

[Prometheus98876]

Lots of languages try to replace C# to some extent : C#, Objective-C and many more. I do not see why this one should be any more successful than the other ones. Especially since unless this Pliant gets lots of libraries for high-performance things like game development, that is never going to happen anyway.

I had a quick look at the link you gave me : However as a programmer that already knows like a dozen languages to varying degrees of proficiency : I do not really see anything that is remarkable enough about this one to justify learning yet another one. It is not like I would be the only person in this camp. Programmers do not generally learn new languages for the sake of it, you have to give them a compelling reason to think that a given task can only be done in a given language or why doing it a yet another language would justify the bother of learning yet another language.

"Just like the benefits of C++ are visible only on large projects (on small you can use scripting) same goes for Pliant. Only a large consistent project will show clear benefits of using pliant (extensibility, expressibility, strong libraries, minimal code, high abstraction, low level optimization)"

I could say that about just about any language which supports low-level operations. Hell, I could say much of this about ASP.NET or PHP in the context of some projects. A lot of popular and powerful programming languuages have all sorts ofe benefits which are only available on larger projects of a given type .

Especially as "large" is vague. Do you mean large in terms of having a lot of lines of programming code, large in terms of the scale of the data to be processed or both?

[Boris Rarden]

Let me answer you with another question. What language would you use today to create a database system like Oracle ? Or microsoft-word ?

Or game physics engine ? Or OS kernel ? The answer in each case would be C or C++. It is the most general and fast language today in which any project can be done. Objective-C and C# are only good for some projects (they target a particular layer of abstration).

Pliant competes with C++ not with C#.

[Prometheus98876]

Let me answer you with another question. What language would you use today to create a database system like Oracle ? Or microsoft-word ?

Or game physics engine ? Or OS kernel ? The answer in each case would be C or C++. It is the most general and fast language today in which any project can be done. Objective-C and C# are only good for some projects (they target a particular layer of abstration).

Pliant competes with C++ not with C#.

Game physics engine : C++, and happily so. If it was a game in which high performance was not an issue : C#.

OS kernel : C or maybe C++. C# if I simply need a simplistic kernel for which performance is not vital.

Database system : Not sure, probably C++.

Given its poor design , about the only reason I can think of to use Objective-C is if you are making Apple products.

C# is highly suitable for a MANY applications. It is a powerful language with many features and libraries ( the .NET ones number in the tens of thousands of really good ones). It is slower than C++ and a number of other languages , however for many , many applications this does not matter. For the vast majority of applications, it is plenty fast enough and anyway, unless it is a high performance application : The choice of programming language makes almost no difference these days.

If you have a look, you will find many even slower languages are popular? Why ? Because programming language speed makes very little difference to anyone not making applications in which high speed is very crucial. Sometimes languages that seem slower can actually do some things FASTER. Python for instance is considered slow usually, however it has some highly optimized mathematical libaries that can be tweaked to run at speeds approaching C++.

This does not sufficiently answer the questions I asked however.

Edited September 10, 2011 by Prometheus98876

[Boris Rarden]

So for all those examples I can use Pliant, and cut the size of my dev team by a factor of about four, since I wouldn't need to hire people who know C# and ASP and Python and Javascript. I will avoid the penalty of integration overhead costs that can eat up years of development. Integration and incompatible systems is what inflating the real work that needs to be done. The libraries you have mentioned can not be mixed -- python ones can't be mixed with the .NET ones.

Pliant is a consistent system that allows full development in which all levels of abstraction can be handled.

Programmers today learn new language when there is a job market for it. Look at Objective-C and Ruby. These languages existed for ages but no one bothered to learn them, until they were forced to do so by the employer.

So popularity of language is not any indication on how good it is. For example, Cobol is not popular today, however one can write in one month an application in COBOL that would take years of development with J2EE.

Perl was popular and only got stronger now, however there are no jobs in it -- Ruby took the stage even though it is a much weaker language with many bugs still in the runtime.

Yet another example is an increased popularity of python only because google provides free hosting through apps engine.

So a person who is not looking for quick fix but wants to build a solid foundation, should learn about benefits of pliant.

[Prometheus98876]

How is using Pliant going to cut your dev team by a factor of four? It would have to be QUITE the language to do that ( very few languages can boast being able to do this very often) or your existing dev team would have to be very much inefficient . Do you really think Pliant is a language that can replace ASP.NET and Javascript and Python and C#? Wow, that is a magic language. If it is capable of replacing all of these, I have to wonder why neither myself or any of my programming buddies have ever of it.

Why isnt this thing getting more attention? It is probably moot, as I seriously doubt it is a suitable replacement for all of those languages, some of which are good for things the others are not. Pliant might be able to do all that, does not mean it is more efficient to use it in order to try to do so though.

Yes, programmers learn new jobs according to the job market. But why would there be a strong job market for Pliant? The "reasons" given so far are not a compelling reason to think that this ever be the case.

You are incorrect as the popularity of Python. Python is popular because of its "lazy" syntax, ease of use , the fact that it has great libraries ( for instance, ScyPy is used by thousands of scientists) . This was all true long before Google Apps Engine was popular. Python was becoming popular before then too.

As for this : "So a person who is not looking for quick fix but wants to build a solid foundation, should learn about benefits of pliant." : Sure some people choose a given language because they want a quick fix and sometimes that is a bad idea. Those sort of people are probably going to do that with any language they think is easy, and are probably relatively poor programmers or way too lazy. Sometimes a "quick fix" is all a problem needs and it works fine. Other programmers do not actually want a merely quick fix and yet somehow manage to use all of the languages used so far to create wonderful solutions efficiently.

A friend of mine even used C# ( a language you seem to think is not good for much) to implement Scheme. It works great. So much for a quick fix.

I myself have used C# for many things and it is great and I can work very efficiently. Generally I think you will find that the choice of programming language does not always make a huge difference, as long as someone picks the one that they are the most comfortable with and which is reasonably well suited to the sort of task at hand. If Pliant does this for you, that is great. I am just not sure if I or many others would necessarily agree.

[Boris Rarden]

If you want to argue about advantages or disadvantages of Pliant, you should refer to objective features, as described on the pliant website www.fullpliant.org. Saying that you can hardly believe that pliant can replace C# and python because you haven't heard about it, is a lot like saying that Rearden Metal is no good because nobody has tried it.

So, to put it another way, this post is not to introduce Pliant's features to you -- they are described elsewhere. If you are having trouble following the documentation on the site, I can assist. Otherwise, you can not judge the book by its cover.

[Prometheus98876]

I do not know enough of the language features to be able to argue well for or against Pliant, that much should be obvious at this point. I do not see you doing this, instead you are throwing me things which do not answer my question or provide a compelling reason to bother.

I do not think I said "I hardly believe it can replace C#", what I did ask was why would I think it would be any more suitable than existing languages, of which C# is fact a good example ( despite the fact that you have asserted otherwise). Same goes for Python. Maybe Pliant is more suitable than them for some things, maybe not. However you have given me no particularly compelling reason to do so.

I am not saying it is no good either - I am asking you I would think so. Instead you do not directly tell me. This is fast becoming a waste of time. I ask a question, you field a whole load of incorrect/irrelevant issues which do not really answer them.

I have been asking you to tell me what is so great about it for a while now, is it a big leap that I want you to tell me about the languages "objective features", or do I have to hit you over the head and yell at you so that you get it? Why do you think I keep asking all these questions about Pliant?

It is not that I am having trouble following the documentation. It is that I am slowly reading through it and I am not finding much that is compelling and I was hoping you could tell me what I might be missing. Apparently you will not or cannot.

What is more, as far as I and some of my friends can tell : If this thread is anything to go by you do not have a firm grasp of the realities of programming serious projects. Or at least how programming language choice factors into it. I am fairly sure this would discourage any serious programmer from wishing to become involved. As if the the fact that you seem to put unwarranted confidence in Plaint was not enough.

Rant about how its like Rearden Metal or how I am saying it is no good because I haven't heard about it ( I never did that anyway) all you wish. I think you will find that there is a logical reason why almost nobody has heard of Pliant : There is little compelling reason why anyone would bother with it at this time, when there are a lot of other languages which are better supported.

Good luck, you are going to need it I think....

Edited September 11, 2011 by Prometheus98876

[Boris Rarden]

The short answer is that Pliant is the first combination of C and Lisp. It has the benefits of both at the same time.

It is a dynamic compiler, that outputs binary, yet has 'eval' support. It also allows the programmer to change the compiler at three different stages -- lexer, parser, and most importantly code generation (think of bytecode rewriting, although there is no bytecode).

This gives great flexiblity to allow to create powerful libraries, that have 'meta' functions that add features to the language -- giving an appropriate level of abstration without sacrificing efficiency.

An example is implementation of 'a^b mod c' syntax that will interatively calculate the result without overflowing the registers through the identity = '(a mod c)^b mod c'.

You can read http://www.fullpliant.org/doc/language/meta for more information.

As well, pliant is not merely a language, it is an object database, a web server, a GWT-like service, an AIR-like client/browser, a perl interface; a set of components implementing services such as vnc, smtp, pop, dns, pdf reading, font renderer, ui engine, advanced color management, client server, server-push support (comet), threads, operating system interface for linking dlls, sockets.

Pliant was created over 25 years, by one man who used the system to run a printing factory.

For further questions, please refer to www.fullpliant.org

[Prometheus98876]

Ok, thanks that is a lot more useful and actually helps motivate me to bother reading the documentation. That certainly sounds interesting the way you put it. I will have to look into it myself to see if it actually does all that stuff well. Of course, I can do this stuff fairly easy with other languages and their toolsets, so it would have to be something pretty special. I do know some LISP and of course I know C, and a combination of the two is certainly...interesting. It remains to be seen whether it is effective, but sounds as though it would fun at least for a while. Truth be told, I am starting to see how it might be just fine for some stuff at least.

Of course, it would be an easier sell if you could provide potential investors / employees with some details of programs that might have been made with it ( I guess the website probably mentions it somewhere though...) . Preferably something they might be able to download and run.

Anyway good luck with that thing. My objections / doubts aside : It is certainly an ambitious project and I wish you "luck" with it. I am not sure how one could run a business around creating Pliant apps, but that does not mean it cannot be done. Perhaps it has a very viable niche market ( factories? xD ). I for one would be interested to hear if you do get anywhere with this, if only to hear a a presumably interesting story about an underdog programming language being used so successfully.