Urbit is well documented, in easy-to-understand terminology, from low level, to high level: https://urbit.org/docs/ https://urbit.org/docs/nock/definition/ https://urbit.org/docs/hoon/concepts/
The code is open source, under MIT license: https://github.com/urbit/urbit
Heck, urbit even shows up to Hacker News semi-regularly: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=urbit
What backs your claim they have done nothing to clear up the confusion about it?
"A value in Hoon is called a noun" - or you could just call it a value.
"A gate is a Hoon function" - or you could just call it a function.
"A core has no exact equivalent in conventional languages, but the closest equivalent is an object. An object has methods; a core has functionally computed attributes (arms). An arm that produces a gate is the Hoon equivalent of a conventional method;" - or you could just say that objects in Hoon (the language) can have methods and attributes, and you would never need to invent the core/arm/gate terminology.
They try to give themselves an out by saying stuff like "Hoon has concepts like all these abstractions, but they remain false cognates." When you dig into it, the only unique things are the words. It's like children trying to come up with a code- "instead of door we'll say blorp and instead of close we'll say bleep. Now bleep the blorp before we continue inventing our code.
A "value" sounds like an abstract concept. A noun is one of two things: a natural number or a pair of nouns. Calling it a "value" makes it sound much more abstract than it is.
> "A core has no exact equivalent in conventional languages, but the closest equivalent is an object. An object has methods; a core has functionally computed attributes (arms). An arm that produces a gate is the Hoon equivalent of a conventional method;" - or you could just say that objects in Hoon (the language) can have methods and attributes, and you would never need to invent the core/arm/gate terminology.
A core is not an object in any meaningful sense. You can create stuff that looks like objects with them, but they're used for a lot more than that. For example, all gates/functions are cores, but there's no sense in which you'd call those "objects".
> They try to give themselves an out by saying stuff like "Hoon has concepts like all these abstractions, but they remain false cognates." When you dig into it, the only unique things are the words. It's like children trying to come up with a code- "instead of door we'll say blorp and instead of close we'll say bleep. Now bleep the blorp before we continue inventing our code.
The thing about revolutionary concepts is that their underlying principles are different than what you're used to, so if they look similar on the surface, you're lulled into thinking they're basically the same. But anyone who's put significant effort into programming in Urbit will tell you the system is fundamentally different. Not in the sense of "you could never understand what's going on here"; but rather, "we made these few different design decisions in the beginning, and that permeates everything".
To me, all you're doing here is describing an object-based language in which functions are first-class. Obviously, Urbit didn't invent this concept. Its predecessors used normal names for these terms. Why does Urbit invent new ones?
We could productively stay focused on just this one example, and see if there's a better reason for Urbit to call its objects "cores" and its methods or attached functions or computed attributes "arms".
To most of us, a "noun" is a person, place, thing, idea, or feeling.
I started replying to the other stuff you were saying, but I started getting this feeling like you're in on the joke and I'm not.
In many, many languages, a function is also an object.
You should read https://urbit.org/posts/overview/
The whole reason Urbit exists is that Unix + the internet is broken and needs a complete overhaul
Re: the different names, there are slight differences between gates and functions, but I agree they're not important enough to merit the change in name. But hey, it takes a purist to spend 15 years rewriting the whole stack from scratch!
So instead, I should load up Urbit, locate on a planet, spin up a garglemitz on the spitzenspeil with the hoon japing over the nock.
If you add Xenu, Body Thetans, e-meters, I think you might be on to something!
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No seriously. There are wrong things with the monolothic kernel as well as microkernels. Theyre design tradeoffs. But none of the existing, well established methods throw away the language of computing of the last 60 years. Some tech stacks may add a new type, but they are able to describe why a new classification is needed, and how it fits iin the existing model.
What Urbit is doing, is polluting the namespace by turning existing nomenclature into some sort of technofreakish cult. Up is now down. Down is now blarbbliboop. And anyone questioning the "Master" is berated and denigrated by means of 'lack of intelligence'. You all should be defending your way and means.
Because in my eyes, you all are wrong until you can start integrating standard and normal nomenclature - because it's hiding something unsavory.
In other words, what is Urbit's "Killer Feature"? Cause I'm not seeing one.
And a runner up question: Is Urbit still heavily dependent on unreleased root node code? In other words, is this distributed computing just a load of hype covering over a overly complicated star topology?
The best way i've found to describe Urbit as a product is a decentralized, open source version of WeChat. No, nobody really cares about privacy, but I think the argument is that for the consumer there is the potential for a way better experience. If all of your data is in one place, as a consumer, you only ever need to enter it once. More interestingly, all of your apps can work together in a seamless way that's currently impossible with the current paradigm. Your maps app has ubers and lyfts driving around on it, with yelp/opentable postings on all restaurants, etc.
On the developer side, you save so much time not reimplementing identity, payments, reputation, etc., everytime. There are more reasons why Urbit is better for developers, but I won't go into them here. Checkout the whitepaper...it's a little dense, but there is logic there:
Now, to your question. WeChat won at chat and once they owned communication / identity, it was fairly easy to move into payments and everything else. Urbit has a classic chicken & egg problem: its tech is designed to be better at doing everything for everybody. The current stack is already much more robust and better suited than urbit for most if not all one-off 'killer apps.'
So, you're right, they need to find the first killer app, equivalent to WeChat's 'chat'. I've been following the project for years, and the answer to this question has eluded me. However, recently, I finally heard the first solution which felt like the completely right solution to me, and I believe they're pursuing it.
Yes, some of the language is pompous and unnecessarily 'verbose'(being generous). Yes, they could do a better job explaining the problem in laymen's terms. However, I can tell you that the people behind this project are very intelligent and very serious. And, of course a little crazy..but you have to be a little bit to attempt something on this magnitude...right?
What's that?
Urbit has always been fully open source as far as I know (at least since 2013). It is true that Tlon runs some of the galaxies and stars that most people use, but that's just because other galaxy owners haven't decided it's worth it to do so (because Tlon is doing a great job of it).
That's what I suspected.
Edit: Quote from your post-- "However, recently, I finally heard the first solution which felt like the completely right solution to me, and I believe they're pursuing it."
Yet no answer.
