← Back to context

Comment by mike_hearn

3 days ago

There are research papers that examine this question of whether runtime optimizing data structures is a win, and it's mostly not outside of some special cases like strings. Most collections are quite small. Really big collections tend to be either caches (which are often specialized anyway), or inside databases where you do have more flexibility.

A language fully integrated with the relational model exists, that's PL/SQL and it's got features like classes and packages along with 'natural' SQL integration. You can do all the things you ask for: specify what operations on a collection need to be efficient (indexes), whether they're durable (temporary tables), atomically updatable (LOCK TABLE IN EXCLUSIVE MODE) and so on. It even has a visual GUI builder (APEX). And people do build whole apps in it.

Obviously, this approach is not universal. There are downsides. One can imagine a next-gen attempt at such a language that combined the strengths of something like Java/.NET with the strengths of PL/SQL.

4 comments

mike_hearn

Reply
naasking  3 days ago

> There are research papers that examine this question of whether runtime optimizing data structures is a win

If you mean JIT and similar tech, that's not really what I'm describing either. I'm talking about lifting the time and space complexity of data structures to parameters so you don't have to think about specific details.

Again, think about how tables in a relational database work, where you can write queries against sets without regard for the underlying implementation, and you have external/higher level tools to tune a running program's data structures for better time or space behavior.

> A language fully integrated with the relational model exists, that's PL/SQL

Not a general purpose language suitable for most programming, and missing all of the expressive language features I described, like type/shape inference, higher order queries and query composition and so on. See my previous comments. The tool you mentioned leaves a lot to be desired.

  • mike_hearn  2 days ago

    I guess the closest to that I've seen would be something like Permazen with some nice syntax sugar on top. It's not the relational model, but it does simplify away a lot of the complexity of the object relational mismatch (for Java) whilst preserving the expressiveness of a 'full' mainstream language.

    • naasking  1 day ago

      Yes, that's getting closer, but as you implied it still leaves something to be desired. Ironically what I'm describing is sort of an evolution of Access database programming from 20+ years ago. Everything old is new again.