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Author of the project here... Weird to see this generates such a discussion when the project is something like 20 years old, and has been quasi-dead for a while

by c3d 3y ago

Author of the project here... Weird to see this generates such a discussion when the project is something like 20 years old, and has been quasi-dead for a while now ;-) An interesting derivative of XL is Tao3D, which shows what you can do with it. https://tao3d.sourceforge.net https://tao3d.sourceforge.net A FOSDEM workshop about Tao3D (which includes initiation to XL): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE9LwSuZD64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE9LwSuZD64 The design philosophy, and why it's not "just another Lisp" is here: https://xlr.sourceforge.io/Concept%20Programming%20Presentation.pdf https://xlr.sourceforge.io/Concept%20Programming%20Presentat...

runlaszlorun 3y ago
Well, quite an ambitious and impressive piece of work. And as I mentioned elsewhere here, reading your history made me feel a lot better about not having a ton to show after 3-4 years, haha.
pkjens04 3y ago
How does this compare to http://flexipl.info/ http://flexipl.info/ Iirc backend and goals seem quite similar.
mapcars 3y ago
I never heard about XL and it looks very interesting, the DSL capabilities remind me of Rebol/Red, but it looks like XL has a proper type system and compile-time optimisations. What is the current status the project? Is there any ongoing work and plans?
- c3d 3y ago
  The current state is "on backburner by lack of time". Projects like https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com/2022/03/07/a-theory-of-incomplete-measurements/ https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com/2022/03/07/a-theory... and https://github.com/c3d/DB48X-on-DM42/tree/stable https://github.com/c3d/DB48X-on-DM42/tree/stable have been consuming most of my spare time cycles. Here are factors playing a role in my current thinking: 1/ the LLVM debacle. I just can't follow them changing the APIs all the time. I gave up on LLVM for now. 2/ Rust being the first language introducing a concept that was not trivial to introduce via an XL library, lifetimes. I think that I nailed a design now, but it annoyed me for a while, and the design is not implemented. 3/ I spent some time documenting where I wanted to go, notably the type system. As a result, I found that the language was becoming complicated, which annoys me. I'm trying to get back to super-simple roots, but I have no clear path towards this goal yet. 4/ I want to to unify the self-compiling compiler and the dynamic one. The self-compiler only compiles an older dialect of the language.
  - mapcars 3y ago
    Sounds great, I hope you find a way to resolve those! I will play around with the current version for now, it's been a while since I encountered a new interesting language.
plaguuuuuu 3y ago
20y old but it feels fresh and super powerful to me, maybe I just haven't seen anything like it before. It would be great to have this stuff in other high level languages.
nielsbot 3y ago
Makes me think of this paper "Open, extensible object models" by Ian Piumarta and Alessandro Warth: https://www.piumarta.com/software/id-objmodel/objmodel2.pdf https://www.piumarta.com/software/id-objmodel/objmodel2.pdf The focus is on the object runtime where almost any operation including method lookup can be changed inside the end user environment.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  I just posted a bit of a love letter to Inversion of Control into the related submission: coding felt like I was building each brick from the bottom up, but IoC let me feel like there was a competent responsible place where all the objects & providers were, where they could be flexibly built out & instrumented. With incredible APIs for dynamically modifying or introspecting what this world of entities & the runtime machinery/factories/&c was. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39460840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39460840 Spring Framework & other Java IoC/DI stuff was pretty amazing. I kept finding new cool layers of depth as I dove into the model. I love the idea of programming languages that might better integrate some of these ideas, of instrumentability. I'm not sure if it's actually necessary though; maybe having all these code assemblers living in userland libraries is fine. Thanks for the link! Not sure if I've run into this VPRI / Warth combo paper, & worth revisiting either way.

by c3d 3y ago

runlaszlorun 3y ago

Well, quite an ambitious and impressive piece of work. And as I mentioned elsewhere here, reading your history made me feel a lot better about not having a ton to show after 3-4 years, haha.

pkjens04 3y ago

How does this compare to http://flexipl.info/ http://flexipl.info/ Iirc backend and goals seem quite similar.

mapcars 3y ago

I never heard about XL and it looks very interesting, the DSL capabilities remind me of Rebol/Red, but it looks like XL has a proper type system and compile-time optimisations. What is the current status the project? Is there any ongoing work and plans?

c3d 3y ago
The current state is "on backburner by lack of time". Projects like https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com/2022/03/07/a-theory-of-incomplete-measurements/ https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com/2022/03/07/a-theory... and https://github.com/c3d/DB48X-on-DM42/tree/stable https://github.com/c3d/DB48X-on-DM42/tree/stable have been consuming most of my spare time cycles. Here are factors playing a role in my current thinking: 1/ the LLVM debacle. I just can't follow them changing the APIs all the time. I gave up on LLVM for now. 2/ Rust being the first language introducing a concept that was not trivial to introduce via an XL library, lifetimes. I think that I nailed a design now, but it annoyed me for a while, and the design is not implemented. 3/ I spent some time documenting where I wanted to go, notably the type system. As a result, I found that the language was becoming complicated, which annoys me. I'm trying to get back to super-simple roots, but I have no clear path towards this goal yet. 4/ I want to to unify the self-compiling compiler and the dynamic one. The self-compiler only compiles an older dialect of the language.
- mapcars 3y ago
  Sounds great, I hope you find a way to resolve those! I will play around with the current version for now, it's been a while since I encountered a new interesting language.

plaguuuuuu 3y ago

20y old but it feels fresh and super powerful to me, maybe I just haven't seen anything like it before. It would be great to have this stuff in other high level languages.

nielsbot 3y ago

Makes me think of this paper "Open, extensible object models" by Ian Piumarta and Alessandro Warth: https://www.piumarta.com/software/id-objmodel/objmodel2.pdf https://www.piumarta.com/software/id-objmodel/objmodel2.pdf The focus is on the object runtime where almost any operation including method lookup can be changed inside the end user environment.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I just posted a bit of a love letter to Inversion of Control into the related submission: coding felt like I was building each brick from the bottom up, but IoC let me feel like there was a competent responsible place where all the objects & providers were, where they could be flexibly built out & instrumented. With incredible APIs for dynamically modifying or introspecting what this world of entities & the runtime machinery/factories/&c was. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39460840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39460840 Spring Framework & other Java IoC/DI stuff was pretty amazing. I kept finding new cool layers of depth as I dove into the model. I love the idea of programming languages that might better integrate some of these ideas, of instrumentability. I'm not sure if it's actually necessary though; maybe having all these code assemblers living in userland libraries is fine. Thanks for the link! Not sure if I've run into this VPRI / Warth combo paper, & worth revisiting either way.