3 ms·

interested to know if you don't mind post it here

FeepingCreature 5y ago
Sure, but keep in mind it's pre-pre-alpha and the current released version is kind of outdated: https://github.com/neat-lang/neat https://github.com/neat-lang/neat Because Neat is self-hosted and frequently depends on syntax features added a few commits ago, building from fresh source can take up to half an hour. You also need a D compiler (for the initial bootstrap version), but that comes with gcc nowadays. If you wanna try that, just run `bootstrap.sh`. (You may have to patch it to use gdc, not ldc, but the commandline should be the same.) This takes a while because it has to build the compiler something like 60 times, each with the previous version. Don't do that though! Gimme a ping and I'll slap a new release tag on it. The releases use the C backend to generate a C dump of the compiler, that can then be shipped and compiled on the target system. Neat is more a D-like than a C-like, but it only breaks C syntax in areas where I think C straight up made the wrong call, like the inside-out type syntax. Memory management uses automatic ref counting, with some optimizations to keep number of inc/dec manageable. The thing I'm most proud of is the full-powered macro system, which is really more of a compile-time compiler plugin system. Here's an example of using the C import macro to bind to a C library: https://github.com/Neat-Lang/neat/blob/master/demos/glfw.nt https://github.com/Neat-Lang/neat/blob/master/demos/glfw.nt Another good example of a macro would be listcomprehensions: https://github.com/Neat-Lang/neat/blob/master/src/neat/macros/listcomprehension.nt https://github.com/Neat-Lang/neat/blob/master/src/neat/macro... You can tell it's just compiler code that happens to be loaded at project compiletime. You can see listcomprehensions at work in the sparkline demo: https://github.com/Neat-Lang/sparkline/blob/master/src/sparkline.nt https://github.com/Neat-Lang/sparkline/blob/master/src/spark... `compiler.$expr xxx` is itself a macro, that parses an expression `xxx` and returns an expression that creates a syntax tree that, when compiled, is equivalent to having written `xxx`. It's effectively the opposite of `eval`. In that expression, `$identifier` is expanded to a variable reference to "identifier". So `ASTSymbol test = compiler.$expr $where && $test;` is equivalent to `ASTSymbol test = new ASTBinary("&&", where, test)`. (This shows its worth as expressions become more expansive.) All in all, this lets you write `bool b = [all a == 5 for a in array]`, and it's exactly equivalent to a plain for loop. You can see the exact for loop at line 103 in that file. `({ })` is stolen from gcc; google "statement expression". The one thing I'm still blocking on is hashmaps, once that's in I'll make a proper announcement post. And, of course, documentation. :-)
- lerno 5y ago
  BTW there's a discord for people working on low level programming languages: https://discord.gg/tgmUz9cFyv https://discord.gg/tgmUz9cFyv Maybe you find it interesting?

Sure, but keep in mind it's pre-pre-alpha and the current released version is kind of outdated: https://github.com/neat-lang/neat https://github.com/neat-lang/neat Because Neat is self-hosted and frequently depends on syntax features added a few commits ago, building from fresh source can take up to half an hour. You also need a D compiler (for the initial bootstrap version), but that comes with gcc nowadays. If you wanna try that, just run `bootstrap.sh`. (You may have to patch it to use gdc, not ldc, but the commandline should be the same.) This takes a while because it has to build the compiler something like 60 times, each with the previous version. Don't do that though! Gimme a ping and I'll slap a new release tag on it. The releases use the C backend to generate a C dump of the compiler, that can then be shipped and compiled on the target system. Neat is more a D-like than a C-like, but it only breaks C syntax in areas where I think C straight up made the wrong call, like the inside-out type syntax. Memory management uses automatic ref counting, with some optimizations to keep number of inc/dec manageable. The thing I'm most proud of is the full-powered macro system, which is really more of a compile-time compiler plugin system. Here's an example of using the C import macro to bind to a C library: https://github.com/Neat-Lang/neat/blob/master/demos/glfw.nt https://github.com/Neat-Lang/neat/blob/master/demos/glfw.nt Another good example of a macro would be listcomprehensions: https://github.com/Neat-Lang/neat/blob/master/src/neat/macros/listcomprehension.nt https://github.com/Neat-Lang/neat/blob/master/src/neat/macro... You can tell it's just compiler code that happens to be loaded at project compiletime. You can see listcomprehensions at work in the sparkline demo: https://github.com/Neat-Lang/sparkline/blob/master/src/sparkline.nt https://github.com/Neat-Lang/sparkline/blob/master/src/spark... `compiler.$expr xxx` is itself a macro, that parses an expression `xxx` and returns an expression that creates a syntax tree that, when compiled, is equivalent to having written `xxx`. It's effectively the opposite of `eval`. In that expression, `$identifier` is expanded to a variable reference to "identifier". So `ASTSymbol test = compiler.$expr $where && $test;` is equivalent to `ASTSymbol test = new ASTBinary("&&", where, test)`. (This shows its worth as expressions become more expansive.) All in all, this lets you write `bool b = [all a == 5 for a in array]`, and it's exactly equivalent to a plain for loop. You can see the exact for loop at line 103 in that file. `({ })` is stolen from gcc; google "statement expression". The one thing I'm still blocking on is hashmaps, once that's in I'll make a proper announcement post. And, of course, documentation. :-)

lerno 5y ago
BTW there's a discord for people working on low level programming languages: https://discord.gg/tgmUz9cFyv https://discord.gg/tgmUz9cFyv Maybe you find it interesting?