alt Hacker Newsl: A new runtime for k and q
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Closed source (and vibe-coded) software, especially for a language runtime, is a non-starter for many people including myself. But proprietary license is actually common in the APL and K family of languages. They are fascinating though, and plenty of free/open implemenations exist, for example: https://ktye.github.io/
Quite cool, but for a new runtime of an existing language it might make sense to compare to, y'know, the other[0] runtimes of that language? Even if one has to omit the best, closed ones for lack of access / permission to benchmark?
Not sure why all the hate (sure site may be vibecoded, not all of us are front-end masters and it's at least not spartan)... I've always found k to be fascinating, and cool idea to try and roll a new one. Wish it were wholly open source, but cool to have a new variant that seems to bench well.
benchmarks at https://github.com/l-labs unlike klong/ngn/bqn et al (which are GREAT) this has the goal of full production database compatibility (and full language compatibility).
We'd like to see some benchmarks against open and closed k interpreters please! I'm curious how well a vibe coded k/q interpreter stands up to Shakti or whatever Mr. Whitney is letting out the door right now.
q is the programming language underpinning kdb+ by Kx Systems - often claimed (by Kx) to be "the fastest database in the world". Possibly also the most expensive? L is an independent implementation of a q interpreter. To those who reluctantly commercially license kdb+ - this will be a welcome alternative.
These single letter names are getting out of hand.
if you k you k ;-) for the uninitiated, this looks like some wallstreet quant's new startup. Initially I thought it was the rebrand of shakti, Arthur Whites most recent rewrite of an array language. It's purpose built tooling for computing tick data for financial markets, but the best way I can describe it is codegolf for experienced programmers who don't want to give up the keyboard. these tools combine dataaccess and the ability to compute against that data with as few abstractions as possible.
As someone who does not know what k4, qSQL, or q are, reading through the landing page of this website was giving me mild schizophrenia. And then I tried to search for these things in the old way, and received incredibly dry technical sites that still don’t tell me what it is, and all these names are wildly SEO unfriendly. So I had Claude give me context and it’s apparently the database Wall Street uses for tick data. Sounds cool but, jeez.
The UI screams gpt 5.5 high lol.
Flagged, lots of unexplained grandiose thinking like “k and q made the vector the unit of thought.” K and q are unexplained and unlinked and “unit vector of thought” is pseudoscientific language
Extremely likely to be AI, though I’m not sure that matters for rules re: submissions
yeah the site's clearly vibecoded and isn't opensource, but i also think this is a genuinely interesting design space and more people should be building in it. APL (https://www.dyalog.com/), BQN (https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/), J/Jd (https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/Overview), Klong (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10586872), Kerf (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9782520), RayforceDB (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45889607), k/q (https://kx.com/) glad there's a new entrant.