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Show HN: Neeilang: Minimalist OOP Language That Compiles to LLVM IR

44 points by neeeeees 7y ago

neeeeees 7y ago
Hi HN! I’ve been working on this language for about 4 months now. While not “complete”, it does have a number of nice features like virtual functions, type inference, etc. I reckon it will not be truly useful until GC is added, and that’s what I’m currently working on. Any feedback is welcome and appreciated!
- jdmoreira 7y ago
  I think it’s great that more and more people are spending time working on programming languages. I have a few questions for you about the type system / type checking. Does llvm make it easier to implement a statically type language than other backends? For example luajit? And how did you learn to implement the typechecker? Is it algorithm W?
  - neeeeees 7y ago
    1) LLVM IR is strongly typed, which makes it very challenging to implement a dynamically-typed language on top of it. AFAIK, there aren't many (any?) successful such implementations of dynamically-typed languages. I haven't used other backend libraries, but I do think that looser typing at the IR level would make it a lot harder to catch implementation bugs; at least with LLVM, you are likely to hit an assertion if you break typing rules in the IR. 2) The type-checker is fairly ad-hoc, and I admittedly didn't look much into the literature here. The general idea is that since variable/function/class field types are explicitly typed, every expression can be checked for violating it's expected type. Implementation-wise, this is facilitated using the visitor pattern [1]. For certain expressions, some extra flexibility is allowed - for example, assigning an object of a child class to a variable of the parent class is not a type error. [1] https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/blob/master/src/type-checker.cc https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/blob/master/src/type-che...
- dilap 7y ago
  What's the motivation? Just a personal itch, or is there something special you're hoping to achieve?
  - neeeeees 7y ago
    Just an itch to understand the tools of the trade better!
unlinked_dll 7y ago
If you add `.md` suffix to your doc files, github will render them for you.
- mjaniczek 7y ago
  I noticed the README had a nice ASCII-ART touch, and briefly thought about converting my .md READMEs back to extensionless plaintext files :)
Mathnerd314 7y ago
also discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/erqm6s/neeilang_a_small_stronglytyped_language_oop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/erqm6...
Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
Isn't it a bit too late (maybe 20 years too late) to work on new OO language? Not that I discourage you, but what areas of OO in languages not explored/expressed by now (say, by C#, Java, C++, younameit) ?
- neeeeees 7y ago
  Not discouraging at all - that's a very valid point! Funnily enough, I wanted to try implementing an OO language because they are popular... I use them a lot, which makes it important for me to understand how they work.
  - nickik 7y ago
    To get an interesting unique feature I recommend implementing generic dispatch a la CLOS or Dylan. That also makes your library writing a real joy, for example you can just write a plus function for each combo of types. Check out Dylan, a high performance dynamic language that compiles to LLVM. Check out this example: https://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/multiple-dispatch.html https://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/multiple-dis... This is how to do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C3_linearization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C3_linearization Gives the language powerful uniqueness feature that the 'mainstream' languages don't have.
    - Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
      But C3 linearization is pretty mainstream after it was implemented in Python
    - neeeeees 7y ago
      Interesting suggestion! I'll definitely check it out. Looks like this, along with generics, will make the library a lot easier to write. Thanks!
Hayvok 7y ago
Is there sample code outside of /test?
- protomyth 7y ago
  The page http://www.github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang http://www.github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang is linked from the read me.
  - neeeeees 7y ago
    Thanks! I've updated the doc to Markdown as suggested by other commenters, so it is now available at https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang.md https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang.md
c-smile 7y ago
What is the main goal of it? By feature set it looks close to D lang so asking. Yet, have you considered to implement TypeScript instead? Having native compiler of TS (or at least subset of it) would be beneficial.
- neeeeees 7y ago
  This main goal for me is learning and not developing a production-ready language. When picking the feature set, I wanted something like Java (OOP, GC, no arbitrary pointers) but without a VM. I think implementing TypeScript natively would be a very interesting project, but the 'all valid JavaScript is valid TypeScript' part of the spec means you're also implementing an AOT JS compiler, which is much more challenging.

44 points by neeeeees 7y ago

Hi HN! I’ve been working on this language for about 4 months now. While not “complete”, it does have a number of nice features like virtual functions, type inference, etc. I reckon it will not be truly useful until GC is added, and that’s what I’m currently working on. Any feedback is welcome and appreciated!

jdmoreira 7y ago
I think it’s great that more and more people are spending time working on programming languages. I have a few questions for you about the type system / type checking. Does llvm make it easier to implement a statically type language than other backends? For example luajit? And how did you learn to implement the typechecker? Is it algorithm W?
- neeeeees 7y ago
  1) LLVM IR is strongly typed, which makes it very challenging to implement a dynamically-typed language on top of it. AFAIK, there aren't many (any?) successful such implementations of dynamically-typed languages. I haven't used other backend libraries, but I do think that looser typing at the IR level would make it a lot harder to catch implementation bugs; at least with LLVM, you are likely to hit an assertion if you break typing rules in the IR. 2) The type-checker is fairly ad-hoc, and I admittedly didn't look much into the literature here. The general idea is that since variable/function/class field types are explicitly typed, every expression can be checked for violating it's expected type. Implementation-wise, this is facilitated using the visitor pattern [1]. For certain expressions, some extra flexibility is allowed - for example, assigning an object of a child class to a variable of the parent class is not a type error. [1] https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/blob/master/src/type-checker.cc https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/blob/master/src/type-che...
dilap 7y ago
What's the motivation? Just a personal itch, or is there something special you're hoping to achieve?
- neeeeees 7y ago
  Just an itch to understand the tools of the trade better!

unlinked_dll 7y ago

If you add `.md` suffix to your doc files, github will render them for you.

mjaniczek 7y ago
I noticed the README had a nice ASCII-ART touch, and briefly thought about converting my .md READMEs back to extensionless plaintext files :)

Mathnerd314 7y ago

also discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/erqm6s/neeilang_a_small_stronglytyped_language_oop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/erqm6...

Iwan-Zotow 7y ago

Isn't it a bit too late (maybe 20 years too late) to work on new OO language? Not that I discourage you, but what areas of OO in languages not explored/expressed by now (say, by C#, Java, C++, younameit) ?

neeeeees 7y ago
Not discouraging at all - that's a very valid point! Funnily enough, I wanted to try implementing an OO language because they are popular... I use them a lot, which makes it important for me to understand how they work.
- nickik 7y ago
  To get an interesting unique feature I recommend implementing generic dispatch a la CLOS or Dylan. That also makes your library writing a real joy, for example you can just write a plus function for each combo of types. Check out Dylan, a high performance dynamic language that compiles to LLVM. Check out this example: https://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/multiple-dispatch.html https://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/multiple-dis... This is how to do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C3_linearization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C3_linearization Gives the language powerful uniqueness feature that the 'mainstream' languages don't have.
  - Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
    But C3 linearization is pretty mainstream after it was implemented in Python
  - neeeeees 7y ago
    Interesting suggestion! I'll definitely check it out. Looks like this, along with generics, will make the library a lot easier to write. Thanks!

Hayvok 7y ago

Is there sample code outside of /test?

protomyth 7y ago
The page http://www.github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang http://www.github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang is linked from the read me.
- neeeeees 7y ago
  Thanks! I've updated the doc to Markdown as suggested by other commenters, so it is now available at https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang.md https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang.md

c-smile 7y ago

What is the main goal of it? By feature set it looks close to D lang so asking. Yet, have you considered to implement TypeScript instead? Having native compiler of TS (or at least subset of it) would be beneficial.

neeeeees 7y ago
This main goal for me is learning and not developing a production-ready language. When picking the feature set, I wanted something like Java (OOP, GC, no arbitrary pointers) but without a VM. I think implementing TypeScript natively would be a very interesting project, but the 'all valid JavaScript is valid TypeScript' part of the spec means you're also implementing an AOT JS compiler, which is much more challenging.