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Recently, the news that Huawei wants to independently develop programming languages has suddenly caught fire on the Internet.
According to Weibo blogger @IT Engineer, Huawei is developing a new self-programming language, Cangjie, led by Feng Xinyu, a doctoral supervisor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Nanjing University.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >△ Image source Weibo@IT engineer, authorized
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At present, this matter has not been officially confirmed, but it is known that @anonymous users revealed that Huawei intends to study its own programming language, which has long been an open secret in the industry.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > "Huawei's self-developed programming language is not a secret."</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > "compiler labs have long existed"</h1>
In fact, Huawei has long been moving in compilers and programming languages.
The Ark Compiler is one of Huawei's research achievements in the direction of compilers.
On August 31, 2019, Huawei released the source code of the Ark compiler on the open source platform, which is Huawei's first completely independent compiler platform.
Husky, who knows @cats, said that there is a compiler and programming language laboratory under the Central Software Research Institute of Huawei's 2012 lab, which has existed for many years.
From the recruitment information on the Lagou website, it can be seen that there is indeed a compiler laboratory & chip software collaborative design department under the central software institute of Huawei's 2012 laboratory, "which has been working in the field of compiler and chip software collaborative design for more than 10 years".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >△ source pull net
So, why conduct research in this area?
Know @ cat husky said that in an exchange last year, Dr. Wang Chenglu, president of Huawei's consumer BG software department, mentioned why Huawei should engage in this laboratory and do compilers.
To put it simply, Huawei found out a long time ago that compiling itself on the core network equipment can greatly improve performance (communication equipment also has performance requirements), and then it began to have a small team to compile. That is to say, before doing the Ark compiler, Huawei has been doing the work related to compilation for many years.
In the process of making smartphones, Huawei wants to make the phone as smooth as the iPhone, but encountered many difficulties, one of the most important points is the Virtual Machine Mechanism of Android.
So they made a very important decision - (research and development) Ark compiler, in fact, this is not only for mobile phone platforms, but also for communication equipment, etc., to unify all of Huawei's compilation work and comprehensively improve performance.
However, the Ark compiler faces issues such as Java's reflection mechanism, which need to be addressed.
Therefore, for the news that Huawei wants to develop its own programming language, I know @ cat husky speculated that self-developed programming language is a step to be taken sooner or later.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > "experts in related fields joined"</h1>
In addition, some netizens have revealed that Huawei's recruitment in related directions in recent times is also very large.
In 2014, Huawei hired Peng Wu in a research lab in the United States, who had worked at IBM for more than a decade, was an expert in parallel computing languages and compilers, and won the 2012 PACT Best Paper Award.
According to Peng Wu's information on the LinkedIn, she joined The Huawei compiler Programming Technologies Lab as a senior director in December 2014, and joined Futurewei, Huawei's US subsidiary, as a technical director, responsible for the design of programming languages and compiler frameworks.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >△ source LinkedIn
And just this year, Huawei set up a programming languages lab at the University of Edinburgh and hired Dan R. Ghica as its director, which is already recruiting phD interns for programming language engineers.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >△ source of the University of Edinburgh official website
From google academic point of view, Dan R. Ghica's main research direction is the programming language, h-index up to 22, the paper has been cited more than a thousand times.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >△ image source Google Academic
And who is the professor Feng Xinyu who is in charge of "Cangjie" in this rumor?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Who is Feng Xinyu? </h1>
According to the official website of Nanjing University, Professor Feng Xinyu graduated from Nanjing University with a bachelor's degree in computer science, and then studied for a doctorate in computer science at Yale University, during which he interned at AT&T Laboratory.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >△ Source Nanjing University official website
Professor Feng Xinyu is mainly engaged in the research of program verification, concurrency theory, and programming language theory, and is an expert in the direction of programming languages in China's colleges and universities.
From 2010 to 2017, Professor Feng Xinyu was a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, and came to Nanjing University after 18 years, and is currently a professor at Nanjing University, where he led the team to win the PLDI Outstanding Paper Award in 2019.
Zhihu @ anonymous user said that Professor Feng Xinyu may be one of the people who have the most POPLs and PL summits in mainland universities.
In addition, Feng Xinyu's supervisor, Professor Shao Zhong, an alumnus of the junior class of the University of Science and Technology of China, graduated from Princeton University with a master's degree and a deep understanding of programming languages and compilation systems.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >△ image source the official website of the University of Science and Technology of China
Professor Shao Zhong has developed the compiler SML/NJ for the SML language, has in-depth research on the field of "trusted software with proof", published 5 papers on POPL, and is also the first scholar in China to publish papers on POPL.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Google and Apple have their own programming languages</h1>
In fact, both Google and Apple have launched their own programming languages.
Google launched go in 2009, which is designed to run fast, compile at a good pace, and make it easier to write.
This also makes the Go language more restrictive in syntax, but it does find a balance between "running speed", "compilation speed" and "easy to get started", becoming one of the more popular programming languages at present.
Apple also launched its own Swift language at WWDC in 2014, and with its Python-like ease of use and strong operational efficiency, it once became one of the most popular TOP 15 programming languages that year.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > for "Cangjie" that has not yet been published</h1>
For Huawei's self-developed programming language "Cangjie" this time, many netizens expressed their views.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >1, go steadier, open source is almost necessary</h1>
In fact, China has not had a "self-developed programming language" before.
In January, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences launched "Mulan", a programming language based on Python implementations.
However, Liu Lei, the person in charge of the "Mulan" project, used "completely independent design, development and implementation" to describe this programming language.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences officials then responded that Liu Lei "exaggerated propaganda", such a statement is a "false statement", and this language has gradually disappeared from the public eye.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >△ "Mulan" guess number routine, the source of the picture knows @ Wu Xuan
With the precedent of "Mulan", in response to Huawei's "Cangjie", Zhihu @ Wu Xuan believes that domestic programming languages should be more stable, and open source is almost necessary.
Learn some lessons from Mulan (welcome to participate in the re-enactment), open source as soon as possible, and try to avoid false rumors. If the goal is a general-purpose programming language, it is necessary to align with the English programming languages on the market today in openness. Open source is almost a must. In this special period, it is inevitable to be put under the microscope, and it is better to prepare for it earlier. If it is not open source, even if outsiders want to help counter the rumors, the delay and cost will be very large. Although Mulan had a decompiled version earlier, it was not an official channel after all, and the concealment quickly allowed rumors to quickly occupy the main field of public opinion.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >2, should not be just to solve the "self-research"</h1>
In response to this news breaking, Zhihu @DBinary believes that "self-research" should not be the focus, and "Cangjie" should come up with a more convincing value embodiment.
A language to develop, not to mention the ecology, but to talk about what problems this language was born to solve. And is this language called Cangjie just to solve the problem of "self-research"?
If you just take the self-developed programming language, it is really not a very tall thing, you see I wrote a language called StoryScript myself, starting with the lexical analyzer, compiler, virtual machine, debugger, everything. There should be no second person besides me who will use this language, not because the language is tall, but because no one can see it.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >3, do not use "Char" as an English name</h1>
Of course, if you just talk about things, Zhihu @ Su Yuan said that from the English name of "Cangjie" Char that broke the news, it is actually not a good choice, and I hope to choose a better name when it is officially released.
Char means character in computers, and the concept of Char is found in almost all programming languages. If a new language name and a computer generic term are duplicated, they are already at a disadvantage when it comes to content search. Developers who want to find Cangjie's information will be filled with a lot of irrelevant information. Ranked by weight, it is likely that the first five pages do not have the results of Cangjie language.
So, what do you think about Huawei's self-developed programming language "Cangjie"?
@IT Engineer's Weibo: https://weibo.com/1749224837/JiAFh0oFM?type=repost#_rnd1599465214374
Zhihu @ Wu Xuan's answer: https://www.zhihu.com/question/418762759/answer/1452144290
Zhihu @ Su Yuan's answer: https://www.zhihu.com/question/418762759/answer/1458729514
Zhihu @ cat husky answer: https://www.zhihu.com/question/418762759/answer/1459388553
Zhihu @DBinary's answer: https://www.zhihu.com/question/418762759/answer/1458923757
Zhihu @ Anonymous user's answer: https://www.zhihu.com/question/418762759/answer/1454618474
Reference Links:
https://cs.nju.edu.cn/xyfeng/research/feng-cv.pdf
https://www.lagou.com/jobs/6842654.html?show=
https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/he-lab/2020/08/26/phd-internship-programming-language-engineer/
https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~drg/pubs.html
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