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Speaking of fun little languages to create as a hobby. After having created several general-purpose languages like this one, I feel like most of such efforts (i

by kgeist 5y ago

Speaking of fun little languages to create as a hobby. After having created several general-purpose languages like this one, I feel like most of such efforts (including mine) are, sadly, very similar to each other, with small variations. There's an urge to create another language for fun, but I wouldn't want to create another variation of the same thing yet again. So I wonder if there's some kind of catalogue of little hobby languages where authors are trying to explore novel, rare ideas, to get inspired by? Ideas like Rust's borrow checker, for example. The efforts I know about are mostly academic (for example, by Microsoft Research). So far my idee fixe lately has been to create a language which natively supports clean/hexagonal architecture/DDD (for example, clean layer separation can be enforced at compile-time, we use a special tool at work), but the lack of languages that explore these ideas makes me wonder why no one came up with it before, and why having monstruous frameworks with a lot of ceremony is the preferred way -- maybe there's already such a language, but it's too obscure to find it somewhere on the internet. A catalog would be useful.

incanus77 5y ago
There’s another, grid-arranged compilation that I like but can’t seem to find right now, but there is also this: https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages
pjmlp 5y ago
While Rust is doing lots of interesting work bringing borrow checker into mainstream, it all started with Cyclone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_languag... The biggest issue with all these alternative languages, outside the yearly PhD work on compiler thesis across all universities and SIGPLAN papers, is making them into a product worthwhile adopting, the killer framework or platform that forces regular devs to actually adopt them.
ModernMech 5y ago
Ask and ye shall receive: https://futureofcoding.org/catalog/ https://futureofcoding.org/catalog/ That link is a little out of date. There's a spreadsheet floating around with more projects on it but I'm not exactly sure of the link. It's a small but vibrant community. Our founding fathers would probably be Alan Kay and Bret Victor rather than Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson (not saying they founded our group but they are an endless font of inspiration for us). We're trying all kinds of things in programming languages, and the main unspoken rule seems be be: no ALGOL derived languages allowed. Being ALGOL derived is what gives the "very similar to each other, with small variations" vibe that most programming languages have these days. In the PL field we iterated on improving imperative languages for the last 30-40 years, so a surefire way to end up with a radically different language is to build one in a different branch of the PL family tree. https://futureofcoding.org https://futureofcoding.org if it wasn't obvious what the link is to the main site. Edit: here's the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12sTu7RT-s_QlAupY1v-3DfI1Mm9NEX5YMWWTDAKHLfc/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12sTu7RT-s_QlAupY1v-3...

by kgeist 5y ago

incanus77 5y ago

There’s another, grid-arranged compilation that I like but can’t seem to find right now, but there is also this: https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages

pjmlp 5y ago

While Rust is doing lots of interesting work bringing borrow checker into mainstream, it all started with Cyclone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_languag... The biggest issue with all these alternative languages, outside the yearly PhD work on compiler thesis across all universities and SIGPLAN papers, is making them into a product worthwhile adopting, the killer framework or platform that forces regular devs to actually adopt them.

ModernMech 5y ago

Ask and ye shall receive: https://futureofcoding.org/catalog/ https://futureofcoding.org/catalog/ That link is a little out of date. There's a spreadsheet floating around with more projects on it but I'm not exactly sure of the link. It's a small but vibrant community. Our founding fathers would probably be Alan Kay and Bret Victor rather than Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson (not saying they founded our group but they are an endless font of inspiration for us). We're trying all kinds of things in programming languages, and the main unspoken rule seems be be: no ALGOL derived languages allowed. Being ALGOL derived is what gives the "very similar to each other, with small variations" vibe that most programming languages have these days. In the PL field we iterated on improving imperative languages for the last 30-40 years, so a surefire way to end up with a radically different language is to build one in a different branch of the PL family tree. https://futureofcoding.org https://futureofcoding.org if it wasn't obvious what the link is to the main site. Edit: here's the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12sTu7RT-s_QlAupY1v-3DfI1Mm9NEX5YMWWTDAKHLfc/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12sTu7RT-s_QlAupY1v-3...