5 ms·

May I suggest considering Forth as a substrate? Or will that get me voted straight into neckbeard land? I've had a lot of fun hacking Forths, writing my own la

May I suggest considering Forth as a substrate? Or will that get me voted straight into neckbeard land? I've had a lot of fun hacking Forths, writing my own languages didn't really click until I finally had a serious look. Forth skips on most of the complexity of getting from bytes to semantics; even Lisp is complex in comparison; but is still powerful enough to do interesting things; and the best foundation for DSL's I've come across. My latest rabbit hole is called Snabel: https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis/blob/master/snabel.md https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis/blob/master/sna...

vidarh 9y ago
Forth is one of those things that always fascinates me but ultimately always ends up feeling too hard to read. Snabel looks like an interesting experiment in that regard..
- andreasgonewild 9y ago
  Lisp and Forth, everyone gets that reaction on first contact; the real problem is that most popular languages look the same these days. Popularity has very little to do with earning it. And it's getting worse with more and more crapscript lately. I'm not very much into dogmatics and orthodoxy, Forth wasn't the final answer to anything. Nothing ever is. Implementing the same thing over and over again doesn't make sense to me; I have plenty of experience of my own that thinks differently, things I always wanted to work differently. So that's what I'm doing, my best to improve the status quo.
  - e12e 9y ago
    I like both lisp and forth, but also think more syntax is useful for humans - both lisp and forth essentially demand that you program in ASTs directly, rather than some higher level abstraction/more pleasant.... Typography? Advanced semantic grammar? I'm not sure the ease of macro implementation is worth it. I'd love to see more efforts like Dylan. Or different kind of simplicity, like Smalltalk.
    - andreasgonewild 9y ago
      You're not alone in still mourning Dylan... But the more code I write, the more I appreciate languages that stay out of my way until I ask for help; besides Lisp & Forth that basically means C/C++. Elaborate syntax, no matter how convenient; will always become an obstacle at some point. You might think it's funny to see C++ in that list, but these days its possible to use it as a static Common Lisp with crippled macros; Snabels implementation is a testament to that. I was deeply in love with the idea of Smalltalk for a long time, but big pieces of code turn spongy on me as soon as I pass a certain level of complexity. I need more types than that, which is why Snabel had parameterized types from day one.
      - e12e 9y ago
        A reminder to others, and a note-to-self that readable-lisp exists: http://wiki.c2.com/?SweetExpressions http://wiki.c2.com/?SweetExpressions The wiki page makes a valid point; seemingly heavy lisp users will argue against non-s-expression syntax, but happily use prefix notation for quote, and infix for pairs...
  - vidarh 9y ago
    I've spent a lot of time over the years trying to get used to Lispy and Forth-like languages, and the syntax is a much greater barrier than you think. Most languages look pretty much the same because we do have half a century of experience with what people get comfortable with. There's further centuries of experience with what people find readable in natural language. People seem to infer a lot more information from layout and structure than some seem to think. But there is a split there between those who are fine with dense syntax and those who are not. Lisp, Forth, and many functional languages fall in a category that tend to be popular with people who also e.g. find mathematical notation straightforward and are happy to decipher symbol after symbol. But for many of us, being able to instantly get an overview is a visual process that requires more distinct syntax. I can remember pages of code I saw 20-30 years ago by the overall shape of he code, and layout, and even the font, but if I'm asked to recall code by a sequence of tokens I had to read token by token, I'd draw a blank over code I saw days ago. That's why you see languages like e.g. Ruby, that in themselves bring very little new on the semantics side, but that popularise ideas from other languages (e.g. Smalltalk, Self for Ruby, along with a lot of syntactical baggage from Perl). In recent years a lot of ideas have been lifted from Lisp, but some of them are linked quite closely to Lisps syntax. We've started seeing languages tackle this, but it's still a tricky balance to get right. But I think Forth lacks a language that can do this for it. Retaining the ideas of Forth while making it readable to a bigger audience seems like a hard problem, but it's been (reasonably well) tackled for Smalltalk and Lisp. That's what piqued my interested with your experiment.
    - zeveb 9y ago
      > Most languages look pretty much the same because we do have half a century of experience with what people get comfortable with. I think it's more about familiarity rather than any inherent quality of the syntax itself. > But for many of us, being able to instantly get an overview is a visual process that requires more distinct syntax. I think colour and shape can go a long way here, too — and that applies to both Forth & Lisp.
      - andreasgonewild 9y ago
        Or choice of symbols and identifiers. People love to bash Perl, but Larry is definitely on to something when it comes to names and symbols, however flawed/misused the implementation in Perl may be; I feel like we're chasing the same ghosts. An example is Snabels use of "|" for resetting the stack, "_" for dropping the top and "(..)" for grouping modifications; it smells a tiny bit like Perl in that it's not afraid of using what's available to get the wanted experience, but has a dramatic effect on code shape compared to regular mumble-Forth.
- hnlmorg 9y ago
  I think any new language will seem hard to read if you've not made an initial effort to learn to parse it. I had this problem with C++ when I first made the leap from Pascal to C-derived languages. I've not done anything original in Forth, only hacking some existing code on FreeBSD, but I found Forth to be remarkable quiet to pick up once I took time to familiarise myself with it's syntax. Unfortunately that was a while ago now with so little time spent in the language at the time and none spent in it since that I've now forgotten most of what I had learned.

vidarh 9y ago

Forth is one of those things that always fascinates me but ultimately always ends up feeling too hard to read. Snabel looks like an interesting experiment in that regard..

andreasgonewild 9y ago
Lisp and Forth, everyone gets that reaction on first contact; the real problem is that most popular languages look the same these days. Popularity has very little to do with earning it. And it's getting worse with more and more crapscript lately. I'm not very much into dogmatics and orthodoxy, Forth wasn't the final answer to anything. Nothing ever is. Implementing the same thing over and over again doesn't make sense to me; I have plenty of experience of my own that thinks differently, things I always wanted to work differently. So that's what I'm doing, my best to improve the status quo.
- e12e 9y ago
  I like both lisp and forth, but also think more syntax is useful for humans - both lisp and forth essentially demand that you program in ASTs directly, rather than some higher level abstraction/more pleasant.... Typography? Advanced semantic grammar? I'm not sure the ease of macro implementation is worth it. I'd love to see more efforts like Dylan. Or different kind of simplicity, like Smalltalk.
  - andreasgonewild 9y ago
    You're not alone in still mourning Dylan... But the more code I write, the more I appreciate languages that stay out of my way until I ask for help; besides Lisp & Forth that basically means C/C++. Elaborate syntax, no matter how convenient; will always become an obstacle at some point. You might think it's funny to see C++ in that list, but these days its possible to use it as a static Common Lisp with crippled macros; Snabels implementation is a testament to that. I was deeply in love with the idea of Smalltalk for a long time, but big pieces of code turn spongy on me as soon as I pass a certain level of complexity. I need more types than that, which is why Snabel had parameterized types from day one.
    - e12e 9y ago
      A reminder to others, and a note-to-self that readable-lisp exists: http://wiki.c2.com/?SweetExpressions http://wiki.c2.com/?SweetExpressions The wiki page makes a valid point; seemingly heavy lisp users will argue against non-s-expression syntax, but happily use prefix notation for quote, and infix for pairs...
- vidarh 9y ago
  I've spent a lot of time over the years trying to get used to Lispy and Forth-like languages, and the syntax is a much greater barrier than you think. Most languages look pretty much the same because we do have half a century of experience with what people get comfortable with. There's further centuries of experience with what people find readable in natural language. People seem to infer a lot more information from layout and structure than some seem to think. But there is a split there between those who are fine with dense syntax and those who are not. Lisp, Forth, and many functional languages fall in a category that tend to be popular with people who also e.g. find mathematical notation straightforward and are happy to decipher symbol after symbol. But for many of us, being able to instantly get an overview is a visual process that requires more distinct syntax. I can remember pages of code I saw 20-30 years ago by the overall shape of he code, and layout, and even the font, but if I'm asked to recall code by a sequence of tokens I had to read token by token, I'd draw a blank over code I saw days ago. That's why you see languages like e.g. Ruby, that in themselves bring very little new on the semantics side, but that popularise ideas from other languages (e.g. Smalltalk, Self for Ruby, along with a lot of syntactical baggage from Perl). In recent years a lot of ideas have been lifted from Lisp, but some of them are linked quite closely to Lisps syntax. We've started seeing languages tackle this, but it's still a tricky balance to get right. But I think Forth lacks a language that can do this for it. Retaining the ideas of Forth while making it readable to a bigger audience seems like a hard problem, but it's been (reasonably well) tackled for Smalltalk and Lisp. That's what piqued my interested with your experiment.
  - zeveb 9y ago
    > Most languages look pretty much the same because we do have half a century of experience with what people get comfortable with. I think it's more about familiarity rather than any inherent quality of the syntax itself. > But for many of us, being able to instantly get an overview is a visual process that requires more distinct syntax. I think colour and shape can go a long way here, too — and that applies to both Forth & Lisp.
    - andreasgonewild 9y ago
      Or choice of symbols and identifiers. People love to bash Perl, but Larry is definitely on to something when it comes to names and symbols, however flawed/misused the implementation in Perl may be; I feel like we're chasing the same ghosts. An example is Snabels use of "|" for resetting the stack, "_" for dropping the top and "(..)" for grouping modifications; it smells a tiny bit like Perl in that it's not afraid of using what's available to get the wanted experience, but has a dramatic effect on code shape compared to regular mumble-Forth.
hnlmorg 9y ago
I think any new language will seem hard to read if you've not made an initial effort to learn to parse it. I had this problem with C++ when I first made the leap from Pascal to C-derived languages. I've not done anything original in Forth, only hacking some existing code on FreeBSD, but I found Forth to be remarkable quiet to pick up once I took time to familiarise myself with it's syntax. Unfortunately that was a while ago now with so little time spent in the language at the time and none spent in it since that I've now forgotten most of what I had learned.