Pony (programming language): Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|Programming language}}

{{AFC submission|||u=Wukuendo|ns=118|ts=20250103143656}} <!-- Do not remove this line! -->

{{AFC comment|1=Another missing citation here: "As such, even the environment that allows for printing to stdout is passed as a parameter." [[User:Caleb Stanford|Caleb Stanford]] ([[User talk:Caleb Stanford|talk]]) 06:24, 10 March 2025 (UTC)}}

{{AFC comment|1=Please fix the following: (1) The "Creator of Pony". ACM. reference is not formatted correctly. The title of the website is not "Creator of Pony". (2) "The result is he began development on Pony." This sentence can be removed, as it is implied. (3) "capabilities-secure" should likely have a wikilink. (4) "A few examples of idiomatic Pony follow" There is only one, also the "idiomatic" needs a citation or the word can just be removed. (5) "influenced" and "influenced by" are missing a citation. [[User:Caleb Stanford|Caleb Stanford]] ([[User talk:Caleb Stanford|talk]]) 06:23, 10 March 2025 (UTC)}}

{{AFC comment|1=I do believe that the topic is potentially notable. While it's mostly an academic language (with some not-so-well-cited papers), the paper "Deny capabilities for safe, fast actors" is quite well-cited. The developer is a real researcher at Microsoft Research, and the language has 5.8K stars on GitHub. The sources here are of mixed quality but there are some real ones.

However I think the article draft needs some work. What is "stop the world" in the lead? The references need a bit of cleanup. "Creator of Pony, Google Scholar" is not something to include as a reference. "Deny Capabilities for Safe, Fast Actors" is listed twice, once as a plain PDF. InfoQ sources probably OK. Can you fix these things and try again? [[User:Caleb Stanford|Caleb Stanford]] ([[User talk:Caleb Stanford|talk]]) 18:10, 8 March 2025 (UTC)}}

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::Some parts of the critique seem opinionated. For instance, "stop the world" is a phrase from the references, used when referring to GCs, and originally placed into the lead by a previous editor. As this is still a draft, which has not been reviewed, it looks not to be a problem to correct errors, violations of rules, or grammar. When it comes to matters of opinion or aesthetics, however, that appears to be more problematic or something to have been addressed in talk.[[User:Wukuendo|Wukuendo]] ([[User talk:Wukuendo|talk]]) 16:00, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

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{{Infobox programming language

| name = Pony

| logo = Main-gallopingMain_galloping.svg

| paradigm = [[Actor model]], [[object-oriented programming|Object-oriented]], [[Imperative programming|Imperative]]

| designer = Sylvan Clebsch<ref>{{cite web |title=Sylvan Clebsch |website=[[Association_for_Computing_MachineryAssociation for Computing Machinery|ACM]] |url=https://dl.acm.org/profile/83358632257}}</ref>

| influenced by = [[E (programming language)|E]]<ref name="gems">{{cite web|author1=Daniele BonettaLuca|author2=Svizzera italiana|author3=Stefan Marr|author4=Walter Binder|url=https://labs.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=LABS:0:107979754432222:APPLICATION_PROCESS=GETDOC_INLINE:::DOC_ID:975|title=GEMS: Shared-Memory Parallel Programming for Node.js|quote=Pony is itself inspired by the design of E's programming model|website=oracle|date=2 November 2016|access-date=10 March 2025}}</ref>

| influenced by = [[E (programming language)|E]]

| influenced = [[Project Verona]]<ref name="zdnetver">{{Cite web|url=https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-opens-up-rust-inspired-project-verona-programming-language-on-github/|title=Microsoft opens up Rust-inspired Project Verona programming language on GitHub|quote="Project Verona, which also borrows concepts from Cyclone, a "safe dialect of C" and Pony, which has key contributors from Microsoft Research"|author1=Liam Tung|website=ZDNet}}</ref>

| influenced = [[Project Verona]]

| released = {{Start date and age|2015|04|28|df=yes}}<ref>{{cite web |title=First public release | website=[[GitHub]] |url=https://github.com/ponylang/ponyc/releases/tag/0.1.0 |date=28 April 2015}}</ref>

| latest_release_version = 0.5859.130

| latest_release_date = {{start date and age|2025|0304|0926}}

| typing = [[strong typing|strong]], [[static typing|static]], [[type inference|inferred]], [[nominal typing|nominal]], [[structural typing|structural]]

| website = {{URL|http://www.ponylang.org}}

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'''Pony''' (also referred to as '''ponylang''') is a [[Free software|free]] and [[open-source|open source]], object-oriented, [[actor model]], [[Capability-based_securitybased security|capabilities-secure]], high performance programming language.{{Sfn|Allen|2024}}<ref name="hnoon">{{cite web |author=Alex Lashkov |date=26 July 2023 |title=The New Wave of Programming Languages: Pony, Zig, Crystal, Vlang, and Julia |url=https://hackernoon.com/the-new-wave-of-programming-languages-exploring-the-hidden-gems |access-date=24 December 2024 |website=Hackernoon}}</ref><ref name="adabeat">{{cite web | date=8 August 2024 |title=Introduction to Actor Model |url=https://adabeat.com/fp/introduction-to-actor-model/ |access-date=8 March 2025 |website=adabeat}}</ref> Pony's reference capabilities allow even mutable data to be safely [[Evaluation strategy#Call by reference|passed ''by reference'']] between actors. [[Garbage_collection_Garbage collection (computer_sciencecomputer science)|Garbage collection]] is performed [[Concurrency_Concurrency (computer_sciencecomputer science)|concurrently]], per-actor, which eliminates the need to pause program execution or [[Tracing_garbage_collectionTracing garbage collection#Stop-the-world_vsworld vs._incremental_vs incremental vs._concurrent concurrent|"stop the world"]].<ref name="orca">{{cite journal |author1=Sylvan Clebsch | author2=Juliana Franco | author3=Sophia Drossopoulou |date=12 October 2017 |title=Ownership and Reference Counting Based Garbage Collection in the Actor World |url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3133896 |access-date=24 December 2024 |journal=Proc. ACM Program. Lang.| volume=1 | issue=OOPSLA | pages=72:1–72:28 | doi=10.1145/3133896}}</ref><ref name="soc5">{{cite web | publisher=Society 5 Solutions | date=15 October 2024 |title=Introduction to the Pony Programming Language |url=https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introduction-pony-programming-language-society-5-solutions-llc-s3ppf |access-date=28 December 2024 |website=LinkedIn}}</ref><ref name="dcpony">{{Cite web| author=Daniel Caccamo| year= 2018| title = GoA: Actors with Locally Managed Memory for Go| url= https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstreams/b7bb2925-6bd6-49ab-a9b3-bc7581139529/download| access-date=28 December 2024 |website=UWSpace}}</ref> Sylvan Clebsch is the original creator of the language.<ref name="pfintech">{{cite web | author=Charles Humble |date=14 March 2016 |title=Using the Actor-model Language Pony for FinTec |url=https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/03/pony-fintech/ |access-date=24 December 2024 |website=InfoQ}}</ref><ref name="pqc2020">{{cite web |author=Sophia Drossopoulou |date=14 September 2020 |title=Pony, Actors, Causality, Types, and Garbage Collection |url=https://www.infoq.com/presentations/pony-types-garbage-collection/ |access-date=24 December 2024 |website=InfoQ}}</ref> It is now being maintained and developed by members of the Pony team.<ref>{{cite web |title=Team Pony | website=[[GitHub]] |url=https://github.com/orgs/ponylang/people |access-date=28 December 2024}}</ref>

==History==

The language was created by Sylvan Clebsch, while a [[Ph.DPhD]] student at [[Department_of_ComputingDepartment of Computing,_Imperial_College_London Imperial College London|Imperial College London]]. His professor at that time was [[Sophia Drossopoulou]], who is also well known for her contributions to computer programming, and as a lecturer. According to developers who have talked to Sylvan, he was frustrated with not having a high performance language that could run concurrent code securely, safely, and more simply.<ref name="kgpony">{{cite conference |author=Kristoffer Grönlund |date=22 January 2018 | publisher=[[Linux.conf.au|Linux Conference Australia 2018 (LCA2018)]] |title=Everyone gets a pony!| url=https://archive.org/details/lca2018-Everyone_gets_a_pony| access-date=28 December 2024 |website=archive}}</ref>

==Language design==

At its core, Pony is a systems language designed around safety and performance.

=== Safety ===

* [[Type safety]] - Pony is a type safe language.<ref name="hnoon"></ref><ref name="jmpony">{{cite web |author=John Mumm |date=19 March 2019 |title=Safely Sharing Data: Reference Capabilities in Pony |url=https://talks.codemotion.com/safely-sharing-data-reference-capabiliti |access-date=28 December 2024 |website=codemotion}}</ref>

* [[Memory safety]] - There are no dangling pointers and no buffer overruns. There is no null but optional types can be safely represented using unions with the None type.{{Sfn|Allen|2024}}<ref name="atpony">{{cite conference |author=Ankush Thakur |date=21 December 2024 | title=12 New Programming Languages You Should Know| url=https://geekflare.com/dev/new-programming-languages/| access-date=3 January 2025 |website=geekflare}}</ref>

* [[Exception safety]] - There are no runtime exceptions. All exceptions have defined semantics and are always caught.{{Sfn|MCStone|2023}}

* Concurrency Safetysafety - The type system employs reference capabilities to ensure (at compile time) that there are no [[Race_conditionRace condition|data races]] nor [[Deadlock_Deadlock (computer_sciencecomputer science)|deadlocks]].{{Sfn|Mölle|2017}}<ref name="ipony">{{cite web |author=Sean T Allen |date=30 May 2018 |title=Introduction to the Pony programming language |url=https://opensource.com/article/18/5/pony |access-date=28 December 2024 |website=opensource}}</ref><ref>{{cite conference |author1 = Sylvan Clebsch | author2 = Sophia Drossopoulou | author3 = Sebastian Blessing | title = Deny capabilities for safe, fast actors | book-title = AGERE! 2015: Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Programming Based on Actors, Agents, and Decentralized Control | date = October 2015 | pages = 1–12 | publisher = Association for Computing Machinery | ___location = Pittsburgh, PA, USA| isbn = 9781450339018 | doi = 10.1145/2824815.2824816 | editor = Elisa Gonzalez Boix, Philipp Haller, Alessandro Ricci, Carlos Varela}}</ref><ref name="soundness">{{cite web|author1=Juliana Franco|author2=Sylvain Clebsch|author3=Sophia Drossopoulou|author4=Jan Vitek|author5=Tobias Wrigstad| url=https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/research/technicalreports/2018/DTRS18-1.pdf|title=Soundness of a Concurrent Collector for Actors|website=imperial|date=9 March 2018|access-date=8 March 2025}}</ref>

=== Performance ===

* Lock-Freefree - By design, Pony avoids the need for traditional locking mechanisms, which eliminates the overhead and contention associated with locks.<ref name="hnoon"></ref><ref name="kgpony"></ref>

* Native Codecode - Pony is an [[ahead-of-time (AOT)compilation|ahead-of-time [[compiled language]]. There is no interpreter or virtual machine{{Sfn|Mölle|2017}}<ref name="atpony"></ref>

* Concurrent Garbagegarbage Collectioncollection - Each actor's heap is collected separately and concurrently, avoiding the need to "stop the world" for global collection.<ref name="pfintech"></ref><ref name="pqc2020"></ref><ref name="soundness"></ref>

==Examples==

An example of Pony usage.

===Hello World===

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</syntaxhighlight>

There are no global variables in Pony, meaning everything must be contained within an instance of a class or an actor.<ref name="kgpony" /> As such, even the environment that allows for printing to [[stdout|standard output]] is passed as a parameter.<ref name="kgpony" />{{Sfn|Allen|2024}}

==References==

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* [https://tutorial.ponylang.io/ Ponylang Tutorial]

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvLjy8w1G_U Pony: Making it easy to write efficient, concurrent, data race free programs] at [http://curry-on.org/2015/sessions/pony-making-it-easier-to-write-efficient-concurrent-programs.html Curry On 2015] associated with [[ECOOP]] [http://2015.ecoop.org/ 2015]

[[Category:Programming languages]]

[[Category:Concurrent programming languages]]

[[Category:Multi-paradigm programming languages]]

[[Category:Software using the BSD license]]

[[Category:Cross-platform software]]

[[Category:Cross-platform free software]]

[[Category:Free and open source compilers]]