5 ms·

The agena programming language

11 points by RBerenguel 17y ago

prog 17y ago
Looks interesting. Thanks for the link. > Agena is based on the ANSI C source code of Lua, a popular and widely used Open Source programming language. I am curious, what does Agena provide on that Lua does not? I haven't used either.
- _delirium 17y ago
  Yeah, I have similar questions. On these kinds of issues, I often have meta-questions more than proper questions about the language. My first question isn't why they made design decision X or Y, but, what was it about existing languages that led you to make a new one? Presumably there was something, and often, knowing what it was may be more useful info than any number of pages of semantics. It is cool that they have both a free implementation and a full manual, though, which probably somewhere in it contains the answer to my question.
RBerenguel 17y ago
I found it via reddit, and also thought it was interesting. Sadly it sits now in the bottom of my upcoming languages to pick up... And it is a long list. I still have to write some more Forth to be comfortable with it, and then follow (in no particular order, as I still have to decide which is the next best) haskell, lua, go, factor, python (again, I have forgotten a lot of what I knew), agena and probably another one or two I don't remember ATM
- crazydiamond 17y ago
  Oh you've left out clojure and scala in your list ;-) Unless you've already done those. Thanks for the link. Checked it out -- interesting. but too many others on my list, too.
  - RBerenguel 17y ago
    No, I said I had at least two I didn't remember. Thanks for pointing them :D Clojure is in fact closer to the top, after reading some blog posts by a clojure programmer.
    - crazydiamond 17y ago
      Do you typically just go through some tutorials till you get comfortable or do you actually write something in a new language you've been wanting to do ? How do you go about it? Some of your languages like lua, and go have been on my list, too.
      - RBerenguel 17y ago
        I try to code something, and then write some pointers for later use. To learn some PostScript, I wrote a randomly generated christmas postcard with Koch snowflakes and some other L-system fractals that looked good for Christmas, with Lisp I added a lot to Paul Graham's raytracer in ANSI Common Lisp (beside writing one program for a paper and some other odd code, Lisp is my second language to C, now). I am trying to write another raytracer, in Forth, but I just can't get to do it, so I will probably ditch it as a project. As for JavaScript (just know a little... I use it mostly as I would use C), I wrote some code I use in my blog. Learnt Java to do some assignments for the University... Lex for a tool to somehow parse C (long story :) and so on. I always try to write some code that will be "useful", or is in my list of "try to code this!" and well-suited for the language and then comment that code, thus I don't forget everything I used for it. But it is hard to have a lot of different projects, and sometimes (like in Forth) I stall :/

11 points by RBerenguel 17y ago

prog 17y ago

Looks interesting. Thanks for the link. > Agena is based on the ANSI C source code of Lua, a popular and widely used Open Source programming language. I am curious, what does Agena provide on that Lua does not? I haven't used either.

_delirium 17y ago
Yeah, I have similar questions. On these kinds of issues, I often have meta-questions more than proper questions about the language. My first question isn't why they made design decision X or Y, but, what was it about existing languages that led you to make a new one? Presumably there was something, and often, knowing what it was may be more useful info than any number of pages of semantics. It is cool that they have both a free implementation and a full manual, though, which probably somewhere in it contains the answer to my question.

RBerenguel 17y ago

I found it via reddit, and also thought it was interesting. Sadly it sits now in the bottom of my upcoming languages to pick up... And it is a long list. I still have to write some more Forth to be comfortable with it, and then follow (in no particular order, as I still have to decide which is the next best) haskell, lua, go, factor, python (again, I have forgotten a lot of what I knew), agena and probably another one or two I don't remember ATM

crazydiamond 17y ago
Oh you've left out clojure and scala in your list ;-) Unless you've already done those. Thanks for the link. Checked it out -- interesting. but too many others on my list, too.
- RBerenguel 17y ago
  No, I said I had at least two I didn't remember. Thanks for pointing them :D Clojure is in fact closer to the top, after reading some blog posts by a clojure programmer.
  - crazydiamond 17y ago
    Do you typically just go through some tutorials till you get comfortable or do you actually write something in a new language you've been wanting to do ? How do you go about it? Some of your languages like lua, and go have been on my list, too.
    - RBerenguel 17y ago
      I try to code something, and then write some pointers for later use. To learn some PostScript, I wrote a randomly generated christmas postcard with Koch snowflakes and some other L-system fractals that looked good for Christmas, with Lisp I added a lot to Paul Graham's raytracer in ANSI Common Lisp (beside writing one program for a paper and some other odd code, Lisp is my second language to C, now). I am trying to write another raytracer, in Forth, but I just can't get to do it, so I will probably ditch it as a project. As for JavaScript (just know a little... I use it mostly as I would use C), I wrote some code I use in my blog. Learnt Java to do some assignments for the University... Lex for a tool to somehow parse C (long story :) and so on. I always try to write some code that will be "useful", or is in my list of "try to code this!" and well-suited for the language and then comment that code, thus I don't forget everything I used for it. But it is hard to have a lot of different projects, and sometimes (like in Forth) I stall :/