brassica VS TablaM

I’ve done something like this before to call Haskell from C++ (in [0]), so that I can build my GUI using Qt. It worked pretty well, except that I ran into various difficult-to-resolve linking problems on both Windows and Linux. After a year or two of trying to maintain it, I gave up and switched to a protocol where both sides pass JSON over stdin/stdout. This particular piece of software doesn’t require a huge amount of communication or shared data, so it works well enough.

The really nice thing about the original interop code, though, is that GHC’s new WASM backend uses essentially the same foreign function interface to export functions to JavaScript. So with only some minor modifications, I was able to get the same program working on a webpage [1], which I think is pretty cool.

[0] https://github.com/bradrn/brassica

[1] At the risk of DDOS’ing my poor little home server: https://bradrn.com/brassica/

GHC’s WASM backend is already really useful! I also used it to port one of my own programs to the browser [0], albeit not using the DOM as this person did. Documentation is still sparse, but it’s a very similar process to creating a shared foreign library.

[0] https://github.com/bradrn/brassica

No experience with Rust, but for a couple of personal projects I’ve written the logic in Haskell and the GUI in C++ (e.g. https://github.com/bradrn/brassica/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE....). It works pretty well, at least for smaller projects — the basic idea is that the Haskell code gets compiled into a library (static on Windows, dynamic on Linux) which the C++ side can link to. I’d imagine doing the same with Rust would be even easier, since it’s less of a pain to marshal stuff across the language barrier.

The biggest one for me is undoubtedly my custom keyboard layout Conkey [0], which I use constantly (including for typing this very comment). I hate the way the base US layout tends to get distorted in other keyboard layouts with good support for non-ASCII characters, so Conkey had the explicit goal of retaining that basic unshifted layout. I’ve also ended up porting Conkey to Mac and Linux — and given that I’m slowly switching from Windows to Linux, at least the Linux ports have ‘scratched my own itch’ too, which is nice.

Also, I made a utility to archive the full text of every website I view and store it in a SQLite database for searching. It’s proven pretty useful when I want to find something I saw a while ago and then forgot. (I haven’t attempted to open-source it, though — it consists of three entirely separate components, two of which were a pain to set up. I must try to get it into a more usable state one of these days.)

What else… my sound change applier [1], perhaps? Not that I use it very much, because I only need it on those occasions when I want to do some conlanging, which I haven’t had much time for recently. Actually, sound change appliers strike me as being very much a ‘scratch own itch’ type of project in general… sometimes it feels like every conlanger has written their own, and no two can agree on a nice design. Everyone just has their own unique preferred way of doing things.

[0] https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey

[1] https://github.com/bradrn/brassica

Recently I’ve been trying to do some GTK+ programming again, as a change from my more recent attempts to use Qt with Haskell. Alas, when I try to build the example application from the documentation, I get an error:

> Very curious if anyone knows how to pull this off.

I work in this space (small/mid-size).

The good news is that there are several "obvious" ways to pull this off because an ERP is the culmination of everything a company needs and does. So almost anything you can imagine on the software is part of it.

The bad news, and the reason everyone wants a solution, is that is truly a big space, and then you need E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

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My take is to start from the bottom, and build a much better version of Access/FoxPro (https://tablam.org).

Any medium/big ERP end being a specialized computing platform that needs:

- A programming language

- A database engine

- An orchestration engine

- ELT engine

- Auth

- UI/Report builders

And to be clear: NONE of the "programming language", "database engine", etc are a good fit today.

NONE.

This is the big thing, This is the reason (from a tech POW only) that most attempts fail.

This is the secret of why Cobol rule(d): Is all of this! but is too old! (also, this is why SQL still is best: Is almost this).

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So, to pull this off, you need a team that knows what is "missing" from our current tools, makes a well-integrated package, and adds a "user-friendly" interface in a way that is palatable for the kind of user that uses excel (powerfully).

Is not that impossible. FoxPro was the best example of this kind of integrated solution.

P.D: This is my life's dream, to make this truth!

SEEKING VOLUNTEERS: TablaM relational language (https://tablam.org)

TablaM is an in-progress programming language to provide a more ergonomic experience for building data-oriented applications.

This means that where most languages are focused on low-level details or engineering at large, TablaM is tailored with some small & big design decisions to make it enjoyable to write applications for e-commerce, finance, ERPs, and similar.

Cool things:

- TablaM marry the array + relational models. It means we should get very little need for manual loops and all the ops are vectorized.

Yeah, I worked on https://tablam.org and https://spacetimedb.com.

It becomes pretty clear that `order` is a significant property to make useful (and performant!) programs. "Duplicates" is also required to make usefull programs.

One nonobvious reason for this: You wanna report that a `customer` has a duplicated key `1`. If you CAN'T model `[(customer.id = 1), (customer.id = 1)]` then you can't report errors! And `erroneous` data is VITAL to make useful programs because then the only possibility is "perfect" data, and that is not possible!

Another reason is that we want to `count` duplicates, to see `duplicates`, and other NON-obvious at first: "What is a duplicate?". Get fun with floats, Unicode, combining case and non-case sensitive input... and is obvious that for useful programs IS REQUIRED to support bags in an extended version of the relational model.

And yet...

IS very important to remember about `set semantics` and try to adhere to it when makes sense. Your query planner will like it. You "valid" constraints like it. And `unique index` like it. And so on...

Finally, for app development, I will "suggest" everyone use my lang https://tablam.org!

This is moe interesting than it looks, probably because the best part (IMHO) is about the type system, that is what enables the other ideas.

> In Julia, types are first-class and every value has a type

This is what I do from the start in https://tablam.org and only later found that is not common! Is so intuitive this way and simpler to check, by a lot. In fact, I waste so much time adapting type inference algorithms that are hard to translate because for some reason graphs are imposed on trees, types are second-class and live at a distance (and erased) and all is a mess this way.

The relational model already makes this so simple: `project / rename / extend` relational operators cover you.

From this other facilities become possible. Note how in `SQL` you don't have functions as first-class per se, but now try to imagine that a function is a table and suddenly, is much better!

My relational lang (https://tablam.org) that I wish to be a Excel + Access replacement is still half-backed.

I move it slowly in my personal computer but not much in public. Maybe adding another person will help me on that!

> what is a good alternative to Access (or Fox, I add)

Nothing.

Access is(was) in fact a worse alternative to Fox:

- Much worse DB engine, and that is saying a lot (FoxPro db can and get corrupted. A typical functionality that was added to any fox codebase was a utility to fix it)

- MUCH MUCH worse programming language (VB) that is neither good as-is, much less as a data-programing language.

Fox/dbase is the only data-oriented language that was relatively popular and fit for the use-case.

This is by a mile the main point: Is a desert looking for languages that are made for business app/data oriented programing (and much harder looking for something not weird).

The main options: Fox/dBase/Informix(? not remember), kdb+, Cobol, SQL(when extended as store procedure lang with loops and that)

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This point is big. Having a good form builder (that is already rare) is not enough to be a real contender for this space. You need a language where making queries is truly nice.

In short, you need a language that is `LINQ/Relational` as first-class end-to-end.

- If this lang needs an ORM: FAIL.

- If this lang needs to compose strings to make a query: FAIL.

- If exist "impedance mismatch" between data manipulation/queries and the rest of the lang: FAIL.

- It should also support super-advanced types like date, decimal, currency and ideally dimensional units. Ideally algebraic types as today.

- It should have a version of Rust `serve, Into/From` for easy conversion between data + formats.

- It should look "normal" like python/swift with `LINQ` queries.

This is the lang I trying to build: https://tablam.org

> I asked was about querying data without ever using a SQL language, like tapping directly into the data.

I agree (making https://tablam.org to try a fix & working on https://github.com/clockworklabs/SpacetimeDB in the SQL conformance).

Before I think SQL was bad. *Now I'm certain*. SQL is absurdly massive for things that could have collapse all the features 10x or more.

However, working in an RDBM now I also understand why is not desirable to make "raw" calls to the DB: The engine MUST mediate all the calls to make things works (from query optimization, execution, iteration, lock management, transaction management, etc).

Is incredible how much sophistication is in a simple `SELECT * FROM table`.

What I wish is to build a `Wasm-like` IR so that is what anybody target, and `SQL` is not the mediator.

In my case each lang I have learned (+12) I start coding a mini-ORM. I have done the same so many times, and that is a good way to learn from me. Also, I have to learn Rust building https://tablam.org.

It sounds puzzling, I start learning Rust with https://tablam.org and probably was making my life harder trying to do "advanced" stuff when not have any idea of what I was doing.