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Hi, this is my personal programming language project, Mlatu. Mlatu is a statically typed concatenative programming language. It is purely functional with algeb

Hi, this is my personal programming language project, Mlatu. Mlatu is a statically typed concatenative programming language. It is purely functional with algebraic effects. It currently compiles to Rust but I may switch to Erlang. I’d love any feedback or constructive criticism you guys have!

grzm 5y ago
Good on ya for scratching an itch! > "It currently compiles to Rust but I may switch to Erlang." Why one or the other? Why not both? :)
- brightly-salty 5y ago
  Thanks. To answer your question, the current Rust codegen is pretty terrible performance wise, and all stack manipulations happen to a global mutable Vec. I’m hoping by switching to Erlang, I can take advantage of some of its list and pattern matching optimization, as well as TCO. It would also mean a new focus for the language, as I could add concurrency features as a goal rather easily.
  - mamcx 5y ago
    This sound weird. Erlang is "slower" than Rust, like a lot and specially in this kind of stuff.
    - brightly-salty 5y ago
      It’s not that Erlang is faster than Rust, but that the way I would translate Mlatu to Erlang would be more natural and Erlang-like than the current translation to Rust is, which would probably entail performance improvements.
      - mamcx 5y ago
        I understand that clashing semantics could lead to this, but also think maybe you need a different data structure/patter on Rust? Anyway if you also will leverage more stuff from the Erlang ecosystem is certainly the way to go.
        brightly-salty 5y ago
        I was/am using a `Vec<Rep>` where `Rep` is an enum containing the different primitive types of Mlatu, which worked fine semantically but was just very slow for the amount of pushing and popping off I had to do. Thanks for your response, I do think I want to leverage more stuff from the Erlang.
c54 5y ago
Could this be invoked directly from the bash CLI as a sort of fully featured pipe based syntax layer? Curious for your thoughts here
- brightly-salty 5y ago
  I’m not really sure what you’re saying here, but that’s probably on me. Are you saying executing Mlatu scripts from its CLI?
olodus 5y ago
Awesome to see. Has always thought there were too few concat langs out there. And also really nice that you connect it really well it seems to func prog. I've even felt this niche so underrepresented that I have been thinking about creating a language for it myself. So maybe you beat me to it, or rather I can look to you for some inspiration :p Question: What made you chose to compile to Rust instead of to LLVM or something like that? Do you make use of the memory safety you gain this way in some interesting ways?
- brightly-salty 5y ago
  Thanks. I would like to see more concatenative pauses as well, so don’t be discouraged from creating your own. To be honest, I chose Rust because it was the most performant imperative language I know, not so much for its memory safety. I chose to transpile instead of generating LLVM because I wanted to focus on the frontend and type system more than the backend, and LLVM felt like it would get in the way more than enable it.
myWindoonn 5y ago
coi lo finti .i ki'e .i pe'u ko se purdi lo bangu

grzm 5y ago

Good on ya for scratching an itch! > "It currently compiles to Rust but I may switch to Erlang." Why one or the other? Why not both? :)

brightly-salty 5y ago
Thanks. To answer your question, the current Rust codegen is pretty terrible performance wise, and all stack manipulations happen to a global mutable Vec. I’m hoping by switching to Erlang, I can take advantage of some of its list and pattern matching optimization, as well as TCO. It would also mean a new focus for the language, as I could add concurrency features as a goal rather easily.
- mamcx 5y ago
  This sound weird. Erlang is "slower" than Rust, like a lot and specially in this kind of stuff.
  - brightly-salty 5y ago
    It’s not that Erlang is faster than Rust, but that the way I would translate Mlatu to Erlang would be more natural and Erlang-like than the current translation to Rust is, which would probably entail performance improvements.
    - mamcx 5y ago
      I understand that clashing semantics could lead to this, but also think maybe you need a different data structure/patter on Rust? Anyway if you also will leverage more stuff from the Erlang ecosystem is certainly the way to go.
      - brightly-salty 5y ago
        I was/am using a `Vec<Rep>` where `Rep` is an enum containing the different primitive types of Mlatu, which worked fine semantically but was just very slow for the amount of pushing and popping off I had to do. Thanks for your response, I do think I want to leverage more stuff from the Erlang.

c54 5y ago

Could this be invoked directly from the bash CLI as a sort of fully featured pipe based syntax layer? Curious for your thoughts here

brightly-salty 5y ago
I’m not really sure what you’re saying here, but that’s probably on me. Are you saying executing Mlatu scripts from its CLI?

olodus 5y ago

Awesome to see. Has always thought there were too few concat langs out there. And also really nice that you connect it really well it seems to func prog. I've even felt this niche so underrepresented that I have been thinking about creating a language for it myself. So maybe you beat me to it, or rather I can look to you for some inspiration :p Question: What made you chose to compile to Rust instead of to LLVM or something like that? Do you make use of the memory safety you gain this way in some interesting ways?

brightly-salty 5y ago
Thanks. I would like to see more concatenative pauses as well, so don’t be discouraged from creating your own. To be honest, I chose Rust because it was the most performant imperative language I know, not so much for its memory safety. I chose to transpile instead of generating LLVM because I wanted to focus on the frontend and type system more than the backend, and LLVM felt like it would get in the way more than enable it.

myWindoonn 5y ago

coi lo finti .i ki'e .i pe'u ko se purdi lo bangu