6 ms·

The Misty Programming Language

58 points by Matrixik 3y ago

redbar0n 3y ago
to see how the language (likely) looks like, try this input into perplexity.ai : show me the 3 simplest examples of rosettacode implemented in crockford's misty programming language
- redbar0n 3y ago
  then you can go further, ask perplexity.ai to: use the documentation at https://www.crockford.com/misty/actors.html https://www.crockford.com/misty/actors.html to show an actor code example
voidfunc 3y ago
[flagged]
- 8organicbits 3y ago
  Looks optional? Presumably you'd use them if your natural language uses them.
mratsim 3y ago
After saying that it's a dynamic general-purpose, actor language, the introduction talks about spacing style, comment style, naming and purity. That's very lackluster. Show me a Fizzbuzz or an advent of code. Tell me a story of why it exists. Now the only discussion I can have is why are there no reserved words and can we call our functions and variables "set", "call" and "def" then?
- vidarh 3y ago
  And makes syntax choices (strictness of spacing that forces verbosity) that instantly guarantees that I will never consider the language.
  - JonChesterfield 3y ago
    If you choose language based on syntax instead of semantics you miss everything with useful semantics which doesn't happen to use syntax you're familiar with. That seems a terrible loss. E.g. I deeply dislike the syntax of makefiles and xslt, but the declarative model is so good where it fits that it's worth dealing with the visual discomfort.
    - layer8 3y ago
      Can you recommend any learning material on XSLT that is not focused on the transform-XML-to-HTML use case?
      - JonChesterfield 3y ago
        It turns out XSLT is a trivial programming model (pattern match on the tree) with crazy aesthetics and a near-useless stdlib, which shipped a MVP called 1.0 and then got basically abandoned for json. It's a bit of a disaster of history really. There are newer and saner specifications out there which I am totally ignoring. A bit too much of the world is written in java but you can get xsltproc which is a tiny C program built on libxml2 and run that commandline style. As far as esoteric language go it's great. I'm doing dubious things involving representing ASTs in XML which I'll probably post to github. Taking an example from that in the meantime. The setup is roughly a bunch of calls to xsltproc to turn one XML representation into another: xsltproc --output thing.list.xml tree_to_list.xsl thing.tree.xml I'm liking having a schema for the before and the after forms and generally having a much better time where each individual transform doesn't do very much. The general pattern is recognise the bits you're interested in and copy everything else through unchanged, and view a given .xsl transform as a XML->XML function in weird syntax. Google will find you an "identity transform" which looks like nonsense, a lot of functions can start by copying that and then adding a match for something you care about. One of my data representations is a tree where the information of interest is all in the leaves. That gets turned into a flattened list, then that list gets turned into a text file, then something else goes "oh that text file has C in it, awesome". Tree flattening looks like a reasonable thing to copy&paste in here, thus: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  <xsl:transform version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:str="http://exslt.org/strings" xmlns:ext="http://exslt.org/common" extension-element-prefixes="str ext" > <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>  <xsl:template match="/TokenTree"> <TokenList> <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/> </TokenList> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="@*"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="node()">  <xsl:if test="not(@*)"> <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/> </xsl:if>  <xsl:if test="@*"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:if> </xsl:template> </xsl:transform> So yeah. The syntax is not wonderful. You write xsl: a lot, or at least your editor does. The documentation on this stuff all seems to be a bit java themed and the prevailing attitude seems to be that XML is an ugly thing from the before times. Though see also https://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html https://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html. I'm working by trial and error instead of documentation but that's going well enough. The "oh, that's a tree? Have a declarative DSL for functional transforms to other trees" is a really compelling example of wondrous magic hidden behind insane syntax. (for a nice bonus effect, emacs is really clear on what editing tree structured documents means, and there's a "relax-ng" schema which you can use to find errors in the XML and to have emacs tell you lots of stuff about the document as you type it)
- brabel 3y ago
  This is the spec for the language Douglas Crockford (author of the book "JavaScript: The Good Parts", the JSON specification[1], JSLint[2]) had explained in his famous talk: "The Next Programming Language"[3]. The "big things" in the language are the Actor model, favouring immutability and capabilities-based security. Presumably, there will be a flashy website later that actually motivates why you should use this language and what's cool about it. Notice this looks similar to the JSON spec website[4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON [2] https://www.jslint.com/ https://www.jslint.com/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2idkNdKqpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2idkNdKqpQ [4] https://www.json.org/json-en.html https://www.json.org/json-en.html
  - JackMorgan 3y ago
    Thanks for linking the talk, that helped a lot to see where he's coming from.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  I think space-style nonsense was a great thing to have up front, because it immediately informed me that I will hate this language and never use it. Genuinely appreciate them saving me time.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    I don't get this. Do you purposely 'not' indent your code, to obfuscate it?
    - ktm5j 3y ago
      I think they share my distaste of languages (like python) that use indentation instead of brackets to signify a code block. People have different preferences and it's totally valid, whatever the reason for those preferences.
      - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
        What I don't get is, even if you have brackets, you should be indenting and organizing your code. It seems like people that fight against indenting must have some bad habits, and are upset that the compiler is enforcing any change. Like rehab, they have an addiction (sloppy indenting, poor organization), and the compiler is rehab (forcing you to deal with your addiction to give up bad habits). I do prefer brackets as they are more 'clear'. That doesn't mean different peoples code should have wildly different ways of indenting. We all follow the same traffic rules or it turns into chaos.
        gkbrk 3y ago
        Copy-pasting Python code can easily end up in wrong indentation and broken code. Copy-pasting code in bracketed languages usually pastes and then auto-formats that section automatically.
        norir 3y ago
Turing_Machine 3y ago
Willing to at least look at it, given that it's Crockford. On first glance, I like the patterns. It's long past time that regex got replaced with something that looks less like line noise from an old dialup modem.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  I worked on a Java codebase a while ago that had identifiers which were longer than 80 characters. Perfectly fine in our era of huge display bandwidth, but once upon a time, those identifiers would not have fit on a full-width display without wrapping; at an even earlier time one would have waited a noticeable amount of time for them to print out on a TTY. (and an earlier HN thread suggested that even in our era, those with vision problems who bump display magnification may not appreciate 80-character idents)
  - mminer237 3y ago
    I just have a vertical monitor because it's much more practical for text-based work, but it means I can't fit more than about 75 characters a nline.
  - speed_spread 3y ago
    Doesn't Java have a 32 char limit for identifiers? Or it used to have that, maybe they should have kept it...
bvrmn 3y ago
It seems Nota doesn't allow to represent all float numbers and `null`. It could be a big issue.
havercosine 3y ago
Overall there's very little to understand from the page in terms of motivation, sample examples etc. But, one interesting thing: The math module allows choosing between radians, degrees and more importantly cycles. I only know of one more project, Pico8 fantasy console, which offers this correct "API" for trigonometry.
s6ro 3y ago
As a sucker :-P for actor based systems was immediately reminded of Pony (https://www.ponylang.io/discover/#what-is-pony https://www.ponylang.io/discover/#what-is-pony)
gchaincl 3y ago
[flagged]
wstrom 3y ago
Do we need more new languages? Will AI need a number of languages to complete the the task?
- JonChesterfield 3y ago
  We need better languages than the current ones. In many dimensions. We need lots of new languages because the design tradeoffs are viscously difficult and the language design field is only really progressing by trial and error. Even if you're hardcore obsessed with AI as the one true path to everything, having it write JavaScript is definitely not a global optimum.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  Definitely, because to a first approximation all the ones we already have are crap.
JackMorgan 3y ago
My initial reactions: The good: - network-crossing actor model, but with private addresses and built in routing and security capabilities - object component security - null means null - immutability - AWK-like pattern DSL - functino is a cool way to have your infix operators cake and eat it too as prefix functions The bad: - no type checking on variables, parameters, record fields, record shapes, actor messages, etc - practically need to buy a new keyboard to type all the symbols like '≈', '≠', 'ƒ', etc - null punning seems great until you're looking at a null three function calls later and have no idea where it came from Unsure: - No reserved names means it's very easy to accidentally overwrite a primordial with no warning, I suspect someone will instantly build a linter that makes that a rule because this just looks like a foot-gun Ultimately, this looks like JavaScript without all the foot-guns. Add in some modern features like actors, immutability, and a pattern matching DSL. Add in some new foot-guns like primordial renaming and null punning. If I could snap my fingers and today be able to write Misty in the browser, I'd definitely use it for performance intensive code alongside Typescript until TypedMisty came out, then I'd probably switch for good. However, I'd be absolutely shocked if any major browsers ever support Misty. So it'll probably remain a server side scripting language, which I definitely do not need. Why would I use this on the server for scripting over F#, Clojure, Elixir, or Go?
- incrudible 3y ago
  > symbols like '≈', '≠', 'ƒ' He can not be serious, can he? I thought those were just ligatures. Is he typing on an old APL keyboard?
  - mdm12 3y ago
    Other languages that make heavy usage of non-ASCII Unicode characters (such as Lean) often have tooling support such that one can type '\' along with some combination of ASCII characters to generate characters like '≈', '≠' and 'ƒ'. Along with searchable documentation for the whole mapping of shorthand codes to the mapped Unicode values, of course. Code is read more than written, so I have grown to appreciate programming languages that lean into non-ASCII characters for semantic clarity :)
- 3y ago
JonChesterfield 3y ago
> Functions are first-class values... Good > Functions can not be sent in messages to other actors Oh, so not first class. Mutable closures are tricky to implement though, so fair enough. > Function objects are immutable values. Huh. That means you can easily send a function to another actor. Can even serialise it and send it over a network. That stuff is a real pain for closures over mutable state but totally straightforward for immutable values. That seems like a implementation limitation turning up in the language spec instead of fixing the implementation.
layer8 3y ago
It’s strange that the syntax is not afraid of using non-ASCII Unicode characters (e.g. « », ≤, ≈, ƒ) but then uses the ASCII digraphs /\ and \/ for logical AND and OR instead of ∧ and ∨.
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  I had the same thought, also may as well add in set operations like ∪, ∩, △
- ksherlock 3y ago
  Maybe Crockford is a Mac guy. It looks like all the extended characters are in the MacRoman set and -- on a mac keyboard -- typing ƒ is no more difficult than typing F. ∧ and ∨ are not easily available.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    Yeah, all of those seem to be readily available, at least on the US Mac keyboard layout. ƒ is ⌥f, « and » are ⌥\ and ⌥| respectively, ≤ is ⌥<, ≥ is ⌥>, and ≈ is ⌥x. Edit: for non-Mac people, ⌥ is the "Option" key. Option+f gives you ƒ, and so on. > ∧ and ∨ Well, you could always add them to Favorites on the "Emoji and Symbols" popup.
mlinksva 3y ago
Crockford's RacketCon 2023 talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMDHpPN_p08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMDHpPN_p08 covers Misty (it's apparently specification-only so far) and is generally fun. Added: couple of previous submissions with a handful of comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38680087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38680087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38114122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38114122
- mlinksva 3y ago
  Also, similar thread from a month ago https://lobste.rs/s/r8vitn/misty_programing_language_from_creator https://lobste.rs/s/r8vitn/misty_programing_language_from_cr...
ralphc 3y ago
There's already a dynamic, general-purpose, transitional, actor language, that I'm a big fanboy of, and that's Elixir. I don't see anything here that would make me switch from Elixir, especially with its big ecosystem and head start.
wormius 3y ago
Look forward to checking it out more, but I found the Turkish 'i' functions particularly interesting. Seems oddly specific - are there not other languages with similar situation? Why isn't this abstracted, I wonder, or why is it included at all? Seems "kitchen sink"-y. Maybe there's some explanation somewhere. Anyways, love Crockford, helped save a project with his JS deepcopy implementation (in addition to JSON and all the other work he's done with the programming community)
jacknews 3y ago
"The language is quite strict in its use of spaces and indentation." Not this again. Please stop. Code structure should be explicitly denoted with brackets or whatever. Code formatting is cosmetic, can be applied automatically, and serves as a 'double-entry book-keeping' type check on the structure coded in characters - ie you can easily spot structure errors by pretty-printing.

58 points by Matrixik 3y ago

to see how the language (likely) looks like, try this input into perplexity.ai : show me the 3 simplest examples of rosettacode implemented in crockford's misty programming language

redbar0n 3y ago
then you can go further, ask perplexity.ai to: use the documentation at https://www.crockford.com/misty/actors.html https://www.crockford.com/misty/actors.html to show an actor code example

voidfunc 3y ago

[flagged]

8organicbits 3y ago
Looks optional? Presumably you'd use them if your natural language uses them.

mratsim 3y ago

After saying that it's a dynamic general-purpose, actor language, the introduction talks about spacing style, comment style, naming and purity. That's very lackluster. Show me a Fizzbuzz or an advent of code. Tell me a story of why it exists. Now the only discussion I can have is why are there no reserved words and can we call our functions and variables "set", "call" and "def" then?

vidarh 3y ago
And makes syntax choices (strictness of spacing that forces verbosity) that instantly guarantees that I will never consider the language.
- JonChesterfield 3y ago
  If you choose language based on syntax instead of semantics you miss everything with useful semantics which doesn't happen to use syntax you're familiar with. That seems a terrible loss. E.g. I deeply dislike the syntax of makefiles and xslt, but the declarative model is so good where it fits that it's worth dealing with the visual discomfort.
  - layer8 3y ago
    Can you recommend any learning material on XSLT that is not focused on the transform-XML-to-HTML use case?
    - JonChesterfield 3y ago
      It turns out XSLT is a trivial programming model (pattern match on the tree) with crazy aesthetics and a near-useless stdlib, which shipped a MVP called 1.0 and then got basically abandoned for json. It's a bit of a disaster of history really. There are newer and saner specifications out there which I am totally ignoring. A bit too much of the world is written in java but you can get xsltproc which is a tiny C program built on libxml2 and run that commandline style. As far as esoteric language go it's great. I'm doing dubious things involving representing ASTs in XML which I'll probably post to github. Taking an example from that in the meantime. The setup is roughly a bunch of calls to xsltproc to turn one XML representation into another: xsltproc --output thing.list.xml tree_to_list.xsl thing.tree.xml I'm liking having a schema for the before and the after forms and generally having a much better time where each individual transform doesn't do very much. The general pattern is recognise the bits you're interested in and copy everything else through unchanged, and view a given .xsl transform as a XML->XML function in weird syntax. Google will find you an "identity transform" which looks like nonsense, a lot of functions can start by copying that and then adding a match for something you care about. One of my data representations is a tree where the information of interest is all in the leaves. That gets turned into a flattened list, then that list gets turned into a text file, then something else goes "oh that text file has C in it, awesome". Tree flattening looks like a reasonable thing to copy&paste in here, thus: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  <xsl:transform version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:str="http://exslt.org/strings" xmlns:ext="http://exslt.org/common" extension-element-prefixes="str ext" > <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>  <xsl:template match="/TokenTree"> <TokenList> <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/> </TokenList> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="@*"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="node()">  <xsl:if test="not(@*)"> <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/> </xsl:if>  <xsl:if test="@*"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:if> </xsl:template> </xsl:transform> So yeah. The syntax is not wonderful. You write xsl: a lot, or at least your editor does. The documentation on this stuff all seems to be a bit java themed and the prevailing attitude seems to be that XML is an ugly thing from the before times. Though see also https://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html https://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html. I'm working by trial and error instead of documentation but that's going well enough. The "oh, that's a tree? Have a declarative DSL for functional transforms to other trees" is a really compelling example of wondrous magic hidden behind insane syntax. (for a nice bonus effect, emacs is really clear on what editing tree structured documents means, and there's a "relax-ng" schema which you can use to find errors in the XML and to have emacs tell you lots of stuff about the document as you type it)
brabel 3y ago
This is the spec for the language Douglas Crockford (author of the book "JavaScript: The Good Parts", the JSON specification[1], JSLint[2]) had explained in his famous talk: "The Next Programming Language"[3]. The "big things" in the language are the Actor model, favouring immutability and capabilities-based security. Presumably, there will be a flashy website later that actually motivates why you should use this language and what's cool about it. Notice this looks similar to the JSON spec website[4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON [2] https://www.jslint.com/ https://www.jslint.com/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2idkNdKqpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2idkNdKqpQ [4] https://www.json.org/json-en.html https://www.json.org/json-en.html
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  Thanks for linking the talk, that helped a lot to see where he's coming from.
Modified3019 3y ago
I think space-style nonsense was a great thing to have up front, because it immediately informed me that I will hate this language and never use it. Genuinely appreciate them saving me time.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  I don't get this. Do you purposely 'not' indent your code, to obfuscate it?
  - ktm5j 3y ago
    I think they share my distaste of languages (like python) that use indentation instead of brackets to signify a code block. People have different preferences and it's totally valid, whatever the reason for those preferences.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      What I don't get is, even if you have brackets, you should be indenting and organizing your code. It seems like people that fight against indenting must have some bad habits, and are upset that the compiler is enforcing any change. Like rehab, they have an addiction (sloppy indenting, poor organization), and the compiler is rehab (forcing you to deal with your addiction to give up bad habits). I do prefer brackets as they are more 'clear'. That doesn't mean different peoples code should have wildly different ways of indenting. We all follow the same traffic rules or it turns into chaos.
      - gkbrk 3y ago
        Copy-pasting Python code can easily end up in wrong indentation and broken code. Copy-pasting code in bracketed languages usually pastes and then auto-formats that section automatically.
        norir 3y ago

Turing_Machine 3y ago

Willing to at least look at it, given that it's Crockford. On first glance, I like the patterns. It's long past time that regex got replaced with something that looks less like line noise from an old dialup modem.

082349872349872 3y ago
I worked on a Java codebase a while ago that had identifiers which were longer than 80 characters. Perfectly fine in our era of huge display bandwidth, but once upon a time, those identifiers would not have fit on a full-width display without wrapping; at an even earlier time one would have waited a noticeable amount of time for them to print out on a TTY. (and an earlier HN thread suggested that even in our era, those with vision problems who bump display magnification may not appreciate 80-character idents)
- mminer237 3y ago
  I just have a vertical monitor because it's much more practical for text-based work, but it means I can't fit more than about 75 characters a nline.
- speed_spread 3y ago
  Doesn't Java have a 32 char limit for identifiers? Or it used to have that, maybe they should have kept it...

bvrmn 3y ago

It seems Nota doesn't allow to represent all float numbers and `null`. It could be a big issue.

havercosine 3y ago

Overall there's very little to understand from the page in terms of motivation, sample examples etc. But, one interesting thing: The math module allows choosing between radians, degrees and more importantly cycles. I only know of one more project, Pico8 fantasy console, which offers this correct "API" for trigonometry.

s6ro 3y ago

As a sucker :-P for actor based systems was immediately reminded of Pony (https://www.ponylang.io/discover/#what-is-pony https://www.ponylang.io/discover/#what-is-pony)

gchaincl 3y ago

[flagged]

wstrom 3y ago

Do we need more new languages? Will AI need a number of languages to complete the the task?

JonChesterfield 3y ago
We need better languages than the current ones. In many dimensions. We need lots of new languages because the design tradeoffs are viscously difficult and the language design field is only really progressing by trial and error. Even if you're hardcore obsessed with AI as the one true path to everything, having it write JavaScript is definitely not a global optimum.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
Definitely, because to a first approximation all the ones we already have are crap.

JackMorgan 3y ago

My initial reactions: The good: - network-crossing actor model, but with private addresses and built in routing and security capabilities - object component security - null means null - immutability - AWK-like pattern DSL - functino is a cool way to have your infix operators cake and eat it too as prefix functions The bad: - no type checking on variables, parameters, record fields, record shapes, actor messages, etc - practically need to buy a new keyboard to type all the symbols like '≈', '≠', 'ƒ', etc - null punning seems great until you're looking at a null three function calls later and have no idea where it came from Unsure: - No reserved names means it's very easy to accidentally overwrite a primordial with no warning, I suspect someone will instantly build a linter that makes that a rule because this just looks like a foot-gun Ultimately, this looks like JavaScript without all the foot-guns. Add in some modern features like actors, immutability, and a pattern matching DSL. Add in some new foot-guns like primordial renaming and null punning. If I could snap my fingers and today be able to write Misty in the browser, I'd definitely use it for performance intensive code alongside Typescript until TypedMisty came out, then I'd probably switch for good. However, I'd be absolutely shocked if any major browsers ever support Misty. So it'll probably remain a server side scripting language, which I definitely do not need. Why would I use this on the server for scripting over F#, Clojure, Elixir, or Go?

incrudible 3y ago
> symbols like '≈', '≠', 'ƒ' He can not be serious, can he? I thought those were just ligatures. Is he typing on an old APL keyboard?
- mdm12 3y ago
  Other languages that make heavy usage of non-ASCII Unicode characters (such as Lean) often have tooling support such that one can type '\' along with some combination of ASCII characters to generate characters like '≈', '≠' and 'ƒ'. Along with searchable documentation for the whole mapping of shorthand codes to the mapped Unicode values, of course. Code is read more than written, so I have grown to appreciate programming languages that lean into non-ASCII characters for semantic clarity :)
3y ago

JonChesterfield 3y ago

> Functions are first-class values... Good > Functions can not be sent in messages to other actors Oh, so not first class. Mutable closures are tricky to implement though, so fair enough. > Function objects are immutable values. Huh. That means you can easily send a function to another actor. Can even serialise it and send it over a network. That stuff is a real pain for closures over mutable state but totally straightforward for immutable values. That seems like a implementation limitation turning up in the language spec instead of fixing the implementation.

layer8 3y ago

It’s strange that the syntax is not afraid of using non-ASCII Unicode characters (e.g. « », ≤, ≈, ƒ) but then uses the ASCII digraphs /\ and \/ for logical AND and OR instead of ∧ and ∨.

JackMorgan 3y ago
I had the same thought, also may as well add in set operations like ∪, ∩, △
ksherlock 3y ago
Maybe Crockford is a Mac guy. It looks like all the extended characters are in the MacRoman set and -- on a mac keyboard -- typing ƒ is no more difficult than typing F. ∧ and ∨ are not easily available.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  Yeah, all of those seem to be readily available, at least on the US Mac keyboard layout. ƒ is ⌥f, « and » are ⌥\ and ⌥| respectively, ≤ is ⌥<, ≥ is ⌥>, and ≈ is ⌥x. Edit: for non-Mac people, ⌥ is the "Option" key. Option+f gives you ƒ, and so on. > ∧ and ∨ Well, you could always add them to Favorites on the "Emoji and Symbols" popup.

mlinksva 3y ago

Crockford's RacketCon 2023 talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMDHpPN_p08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMDHpPN_p08 covers Misty (it's apparently specification-only so far) and is generally fun. Added: couple of previous submissions with a handful of comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38680087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38680087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38114122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38114122

mlinksva 3y ago
Also, similar thread from a month ago https://lobste.rs/s/r8vitn/misty_programing_language_from_creator https://lobste.rs/s/r8vitn/misty_programing_language_from_cr...

ralphc 3y ago

There's already a dynamic, general-purpose, transitional, actor language, that I'm a big fanboy of, and that's Elixir. I don't see anything here that would make me switch from Elixir, especially with its big ecosystem and head start.

wormius 3y ago

Look forward to checking it out more, but I found the Turkish 'i' functions particularly interesting. Seems oddly specific - are there not other languages with similar situation? Why isn't this abstracted, I wonder, or why is it included at all? Seems "kitchen sink"-y. Maybe there's some explanation somewhere. Anyways, love Crockford, helped save a project with his JS deepcopy implementation (in addition to JSON and all the other work he's done with the programming community)

jacknews 3y ago

"The language is quite strict in its use of spaces and indentation." Not this again. Please stop. Code structure should be explicitly denoted with brackets or whatever. Code formatting is cosmetic, can be applied automatically, and serves as a 'double-entry book-keeping' type check on the structure coded in characters - ie you can easily spot structure errors by pretty-printing.