6 ms·

Luna Programming Language – a small, elegant VM implemented in C

113 points by alongtheflow 11y ago

bogomipz 11y ago
Neat! Out of curiosity how long did this take you to write?
riscy 11y ago
It doesn't look like this project has gotten past parsing, since all it appears to do is dump an AST.
- dmytrish 11y ago
  It has some opcodes implemented, but at a quick glance I found no signs of any memory management and no way to actually execute opcodes.
wmccullough 11y ago
Another language that's basically Python 1.5...
- wallacoloo 11y ago
  I never dealt with Python until the 2.x series, but hasn't Python always been dynamically typed? Also, the coroutine business seems a significant difference, as Python's concurrency model has always (to my knowledge) been limited by the GIL.
  - kelvin0 11y ago
    Coroutines != Multithreading. Also as I understand it, GIL places limitations on Python multithreading. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
smilekzs 11y ago
Name clash with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11144828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11144828
- EddieRingle 11y ago
  FWIW, this repository is nearly 5 years old.
- startling 11y ago
  Name clash with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_(goddess) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_(goddess)
vortico 11y ago
Luna looked great a year ago, since its syntax it ever-so-close to ideal. If it has momentum now, I'd invest a lot of time writing bindings to popular C libraries, an event loop, and a web framework. But it's not functional yet, or probably ever unless someone adopts it. I'm a fan of tj's other work though. I don't see how he can pump out so many quality npm packages and the like.
- gunn 11y ago
  http://crystal-lang.org/ http://crystal-lang.org/ might be a good fit for you then. Or http://nim-lang.org/ http://nim-lang.org/ if you're flexible on syntax.
  - vortico 11y ago
    Those languages are too big, so I might as well use Ruby or the Node environment when I need a full-featured language with lots of libraries. I'd like something dead simple that I can statically link into my C programs, with a syntax I can completely explain to someone in 15 minutes. I currently use duktape/Coffeescript or Lua/Moonscript for that, since hosting it in C is about ~5 lines of boilerplate code. Edit: Does anyone know of any other languages similar to the syntax of Coffeescript and Moonscript?
    - Marwes 11y ago
      I am working on a language with goals similar to this which is much farther along though still not quite ready for practical use. For example, there it does not currently have a C API. It is written in Rust so it shouldn't be to difficult to provide once I feel it is usable. https://github.com/Marwes/embed_lang https://github.com/Marwes/embed_lang
    - datashaman 11y ago
      http://elixir-lang.org/ http://elixir-lang.org/ looks quite similar, although it is functional (and backed by the Erlang VM BEAM).
  - mikegioia 11y ago
tjholowaychuk 11y ago
Author here. Not sure why it was posted, but this (really old) project is basically defunct. I gave github.com/luna/* to the people creating the visual Luna language that was on HN recently. Moving it to my account must have caught someone's eye. Anyway it was just a toy project that I never had enough time/motivation to complete. I was inspired by the size of Lua's VM, but deterred by its obscurity (and lack of inline documentation), so my original goal was to create a very clean and minimal VM.
- naasking 11y ago
  The code looks nice and straightforward, and kudos on actually producing a typed language. IMO, there's too little of that these days. Too bad you didn't get around to implementing context threading, because I would have liked to see a clean and portable implementation, particularly if you had also planned to support TCO. Is the design you had planned documented anywhere?
- rurban 11y ago
  It's very similar to _why's potion, for which I'm the maintainer now. I added lot's of internal documentation there, but haven't got to add type support (easy, but lof of work) and multi-threading (not easy with this GC). coros, exceptions however are there.
- munificent 11y ago
  > I was inspired by the size of Lua's VM, but deterred by its obscurity (and lack of inline documentation), so my original goal was to create a very clean and minimal VM. Me too, so I created Wren: https://github.com/munificent/wren https://github.com/munificent/wren It's about the same size as Lua, significantly faster, and much more thoroughly documented. I also like the language itself more — it's object model is more familiar to someone coming from Java/C++/C#/etc. — but that's personal preference. ... heh and then I scroll down and see two people have already mentioned Wren. I guess I'm doing a good job of branding it as the "better documented Lua". :)
  - naasking 11y ago
Ace17 11y ago
In the same vein: https://github.com/munificent/wren https://github.com/munificent/wren

113 points by alongtheflow 11y ago

bogomipz 11y ago

Neat! Out of curiosity how long did this take you to write?

riscy 11y ago

It doesn't look like this project has gotten past parsing, since all it appears to do is dump an AST.

dmytrish 11y ago
It has some opcodes implemented, but at a quick glance I found no signs of any memory management and no way to actually execute opcodes.

wmccullough 11y ago

Another language that's basically Python 1.5...

wallacoloo 11y ago
I never dealt with Python until the 2.x series, but hasn't Python always been dynamically typed? Also, the coroutine business seems a significant difference, as Python's concurrency model has always (to my knowledge) been limited by the GIL.
- kelvin0 11y ago
  Coroutines != Multithreading. Also as I understand it, GIL places limitations on Python multithreading. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

smilekzs 11y ago

Name clash with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11144828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11144828

EddieRingle 11y ago
FWIW, this repository is nearly 5 years old.
startling 11y ago
Name clash with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_(goddess) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_(goddess)

vortico 11y ago

Luna looked great a year ago, since its syntax it ever-so-close to ideal. If it has momentum now, I'd invest a lot of time writing bindings to popular C libraries, an event loop, and a web framework. But it's not functional yet, or probably ever unless someone adopts it. I'm a fan of tj's other work though. I don't see how he can pump out so many quality npm packages and the like.

gunn 11y ago
http://crystal-lang.org/ http://crystal-lang.org/ might be a good fit for you then. Or http://nim-lang.org/ http://nim-lang.org/ if you're flexible on syntax.
- vortico 11y ago
  Those languages are too big, so I might as well use Ruby or the Node environment when I need a full-featured language with lots of libraries. I'd like something dead simple that I can statically link into my C programs, with a syntax I can completely explain to someone in 15 minutes. I currently use duktape/Coffeescript or Lua/Moonscript for that, since hosting it in C is about ~5 lines of boilerplate code. Edit: Does anyone know of any other languages similar to the syntax of Coffeescript and Moonscript?
  - Marwes 11y ago
    I am working on a language with goals similar to this which is much farther along though still not quite ready for practical use. For example, there it does not currently have a C API. It is written in Rust so it shouldn't be to difficult to provide once I feel it is usable. https://github.com/Marwes/embed_lang https://github.com/Marwes/embed_lang
  - datashaman 11y ago
    http://elixir-lang.org/ http://elixir-lang.org/ looks quite similar, although it is functional (and backed by the Erlang VM BEAM).
- mikegioia 11y ago

tjholowaychuk 11y ago

Author here. Not sure why it was posted, but this (really old) project is basically defunct. I gave github.com/luna/* to the people creating the visual Luna language that was on HN recently. Moving it to my account must have caught someone's eye. Anyway it was just a toy project that I never had enough time/motivation to complete. I was inspired by the size of Lua's VM, but deterred by its obscurity (and lack of inline documentation), so my original goal was to create a very clean and minimal VM.

naasking 11y ago
The code looks nice and straightforward, and kudos on actually producing a typed language. IMO, there's too little of that these days. Too bad you didn't get around to implementing context threading, because I would have liked to see a clean and portable implementation, particularly if you had also planned to support TCO. Is the design you had planned documented anywhere?
rurban 11y ago
It's very similar to _why's potion, for which I'm the maintainer now. I added lot's of internal documentation there, but haven't got to add type support (easy, but lof of work) and multi-threading (not easy with this GC). coros, exceptions however are there.
munificent 11y ago
> I was inspired by the size of Lua's VM, but deterred by its obscurity (and lack of inline documentation), so my original goal was to create a very clean and minimal VM. Me too, so I created Wren: https://github.com/munificent/wren https://github.com/munificent/wren It's about the same size as Lua, significantly faster, and much more thoroughly documented. I also like the language itself more — it's object model is more familiar to someone coming from Java/C++/C#/etc. — but that's personal preference. ... heh and then I scroll down and see two people have already mentioned Wren. I guess I'm doing a good job of branding it as the "better documented Lua". :)
- naasking 11y ago

Ace17 11y ago

In the same vein: https://github.com/munificent/wren https://github.com/munificent/wren