breck7
pldb.io seems to be unreachable
I don't know if it's just happening on my end, but https://pldb.io seems to be unreachable and has been for a few days:
I'm a bit worried what might be going on with @breck7 and I wonder, does anybody have some way to check in? (Please don't post private contact info in public.)
I'm worried as well. I know he has a family so I hope everyone is ok.
Seems like he's lost almost all of domains and no longer posts on twitter. I also recall that this repo used to have a Discussions tab. It seems like he closed all that? I can't tell if his inactivity is sudden or planned
Hi,
In the past, Breck (@breck7) wrote about suffering from bipolar disorder (from the Web Archive on 11th March 2025). He spoke about hitting a massive surge of energy in 2022, but he has also experienced serious lows. Maybe this is one of them?
However, 3 months of no activity of GitHub is certainly unusual, and would indeed be a cause of concern.
Kind Regards, Liam
Should we consider a hard fork?
To circle back to this, it seems reasonable if there are no other options left. But I imagine Breck might even be okay with handing it over to another person temporarily, without a fork.
@tif-calin I've sent an inquiry to breck a while ago, with still no response. I suppose a fork might now be the reasonable way forward. @celtic-coder you seem to be one of the top contributors, do you have any opinions on who should sign up for a new domain? Perhaps an actual name for it shouldn't be discussed out here in the open, to not encourage domain grabbers too much. I'm happy to provide naming ideas in private if required, but wouldn't want to take over the project myself. I can be reached privately via e.g. [email protected].
Can we please play "tribute" to the original and call it something like open-pldb instead of trying to come up with something completely novel.
We got a WikiData property added for PLDB. I never got around to populating all the relevant entries, but if we do a hard rename it could complicate things. Whereas if we make it clear that this is just a new host for the same database we can continue to use the same WikiData property and simply update the associated URL
We use pldb.io cross references in the Antlr4 grammars-v4 repo, a library of hundreds of grammars for many programming languages. This resource is really quite valuable. I am now going through to see what I can do to bring up a forked version. I'm using Claude to get a handle on this and how to get past the bootstrapping/non-pathform independencies (i.e., can't work on Windows). Will update when I get something working.
I'm personally not a fan of AI code and wouldn't trust that to make a safe online service. But it's nice that you're looking into it and it seems like nobody else is currently stepping up to do so.
I'm personally not a fan of AI code and wouldn't trust that to make a safe online service. But it's nice that you're looking into it and it seems like nobody else is currently stepping up to do so.
I have been using AI tools for years now. It's getting much more sophisticated. While I don't trust the quality, which is why I use huge test suites, it does greatly improve the efficiency in solving problems. My experience is around 100x faster, and I've been programming for 50 years. I have to guide Claude, but it now "understands" my grammar toolkit and can pinpoint grammar ambiguities from a test suite and present solutions based on other solutions I wrote.
I've not really found it to raise my productivity much and due to copyright reasons, I personally will stay far away from it. (This isn't legal advice.) But I realize this is off-topic, so I won't go into it further.
I forked the code and modified it to work with Windows nonsense: https://github.com/kaby76/pldb. The main problem is that pldb.json is in .gitignore, but is required to bootstrap. pldb.json is then regenerated from the build from concept/*.scroll files in the build step. I did not git add -f concept/*.html as these are strictly generated with a build. The plan is to bring up a server for others to use.
I have a pldb server set up at http://pldb.info. The code was updated to streamline the creation of the server from a minimal Ubuntu droplet. Since my interest is in grammars for PLs, my plan is to update information related to that in the .scroll files (via tools). For example, some of the "antlr" grammars-v4 links are stale, and the .scroll files are missing GrammarZoo links.
Hi Ken (@kaby76),
It's late at night here and I don't have time to review all that you have done, but just let me say that it is brilliant to see the PLDB site up and running again!
Thanks very much for your efforts!
Kind regards, Liam
I'm glad that the site is back up. 🎉 I can't recall, did pldb.io have TLS? Currently that seems to be still lacking from pldb.info.
I'm glad that the site is back up. 🎉 I can't recall, did pldb.io have TLS? Currently that seems to be still lacking from pldb.info.
No, there's no https service yet. Will do that next week.
Thanks for all your work! The README still says pldb.io throughout, the GitHub repo says pldb.com, and here I see pldb.info. Which is it? 😅
Thanks for all your work! The README still says pldb.io throughout, the GitHub repo says pldb.com, and here I see pldb.info. Which is it? 😅
I noticed that yesterday after I updated the Antlr grammar links. Will change the HTTP name next to pldb.info.
I've fixed most instances of "pldb.io" and "pldb.com"; updated 172 programming-language entries to cross-reference the Antlr4 grammar; and introduced a CI-tarball quick-install on the server instead of running "npm run build" on a slow, lowest-cost DigitalOcean Ubuntu instance.
Hi Ken (@kaby76),
I have created the PR https://github.com/kaby76/pldb/pull/3 to update what should be the remaining "pldb.io" links.
Kind Regards, Liam
Hi Ken (@kaby76),
I have updated the GitHub links within the new repo (https://github.com/kaby76/pldb/pull/5) to reflect the hard fork changes.
Kind Regards, Liam
For now, i suggest you to open pldb.info, which worked and might copyright by them though...
Aloha all,
I apologize for my long absence.
Work a carpentry job now.
Between life, the job, and a new early encyclopedia project, I think I'd only do a very suboptimal job running this site.
I am delighted that people are interested and have stepped up.
I have been using http://pldb.info the past few weeks. Thank you @kaby76 ! And thanks to @celtic-coder, as always, for your consistent contributions.
It may be fruitful for me to officially hand the reigns to someone else and just become a user and open source contributor myself. I am open to ideas/proposals here or via email. Where do you envision taking the site? I have no doubt that it can go way further than where it's at now (or just perhaps more of the same is good enough).
- Breck
Hi Breck (@breck7),
Delighted to hear that you're okay! Glad that you are busy with life and other projects.
Might it be possible to change the link from "pldb.io" to "pldb.info" on your repo? That way folks now know where to go for the latest version.
Great to hear from you, Breck! Wishing you all the best! 😊
Kind regards, Liam
@breck7 Glad you are back. I added you as an admin to https://github.com/Programming-Language-DataBase where the repo lives. I will be making some updates soon for several Antlr4 grammars--I've been slowly untangling the semantics from the EBNF from the C# Language Working Group and have reorganized things.
@breck7 it's great to hear you're doing okay!
As for the site, perhaps there's still a chance of pldb.info gaining TLS via let's encrypt or such? I think that might provide the biggest boost in visitors, since the current error message most browsers will show by default won't help.
@tif-calin perhaps we could pin this issue, if there's a concern with visibility? Although it is changed in the README now. Feel free to close it or keep it open, or whatever is better.