4 ms·

What I really want to see from a "*-programming-language" post on HN is _why_. Why Lily?

EagnaIonat 8mo ago
> why Building a program language is like poetry. Everyone does it at some point, just most of us know never to share it.
- saghm 8mo ago
  That just moves the question to "why is this one being shared" then. I don't think "because the authors didn't know better than to avoid sharing it like 'most of us'" is a particularly good answer.
andyferris 8mo ago
The README on gitlab at least has a sentence or two on that: https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily > An interpreted language with a focus on expressiveness and type safety Personally I think typed scripting languages could be the future. They should support AOT compilation where necessary.
- keyle 8mo ago
  Why do you think that's the future? Isn't a waste to essentially reinterpret an entire program that may be run 5000 times a day? AOT compilation, how is that different than make && run? At some point, you have a compiled language, if it's quick to compile, you're doing the AOT yourself, the scripting is an illusion. Pun intended.
  - nine_k 8mo ago
    Isn't it a waste to run a test suite for a program that would run 1M times a day in production? The key adjective here is successfully run. You want to detect any errors as early as possible. Ideally even at the early stages of writing the script, when a typechecker is already able to point at certain errors, and thus help avoid missteps in further design.
  - Syzygies 8mo ago
    > Isn't a waste to essentially reinterpret an entire program that may be run 5000 times a day? This is a dated prejudice that I shared. To get started coding with AI I made a dozen language comparison project for a toy math problem. F# floored me with how fast it was, nearly edging out C and Rust on my leaderboard, twice as fast as OCaml, and faster than various compiled languages. Compiling could in principle be fastest, if we had compilers that profiled hours of execution before optimizing code, and only then for "stable" problems. No one writes a compiler like this. In practice, Just In Time interpreters are getting all the love, and it shows. They adapt to the computation. My dated prejudice did not allow for this.
- nofriend 8mo ago
  a statically typed aot compiled scripting language is... not
  - nine_k 8mo ago
    "Scripting" is a role: an embedded, human-friendly, compact language, also suitable for interactive work / REPL. (Laugh all you want, but Haskell has a rather nice REPL, and can work as a scripting language.)
  - LoganDark 8mo ago
    Luau gets pretty close to statically typed and AOT compiled now. It's still a scripting language. Even C or Rust can be a scripting language. You just integrate the toolchain to your app, same as every other scripting language.
    - mastermage 8mo ago
      +1 for Luau which is just realy good.
  - satvikpendem 8mo ago
    I script with Rust via cargo-script, it works great. Scripting is a task for when you want to achieve something in one file instead of a full blown application. It is not about the language, you can script in C or assembly if you so chose.
- bonesss 8mo ago
  F# and C# are typed scripting languages. F# is quite similar to python in script form (.fsx), and has OCamls expressiveness, exhaustive pattern matching, and type inference. That results in highly expressive, terse, and ergonomic domain code. The .Net VM now supports AOT compilation. The future is now-ish :)
paulddraper 8mo ago
From the link: > Key features of Lily: > Built-in template mode > Embed/extend in C > Single-inheritance classes > Exceptions > Generics > Algebraic data types (with Option and Result predefined).
- andsoitis 8mo ago
  That’s what. Not why.
  - paulddraper 8mo ago
    The reason it exists is to provide those features when programming computers.
  - nine_k 8mo ago
    The why: because Lua, Python, JavaScript, Janet, etc lack many or all these features. And each of these features is known to make life easier for a human programmer.
    - dismalaf 8mo ago
      Looking through that list of features, Ruby (the dynamic language I know best) has all but 1 built-in (and the other can be added with Gems). I'm guessing Python probably has them all too (but I don't know Python that well). They're pretty common. So the why still isn't clear.
      - nine_k 8mo ago
        Is Ruby easy to embed in a C program?
        bandrami 8mo ago
        That was originally the point of Ruby
        debugnik 8mo ago
keychera 8mo ago
I am curious as well. some past readme has Why sections and I am not sure why they are removed/changed this have "Why" section https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily/-/blob/d3ace2907747106d9d75e22c4963aa09de14835a/README.md https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily/-/blob/d3ace2907747106... this have "How Lily stands out from other languages:" section https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily/-/blob/785a88534cced5331cd226460dc958a528ac3ccf/README.md https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily/-/blob/785a88534cced53...
- Nevermark 8mo ago
  > More importantly, this design makes it easy to compose whole programs that will never be paused by a garbage collection by avoiding cyclical structures. Or by "breaking" cycles, which will trigger the reference count deallocation.
poulpy123 8mo ago
99.9% of the time it will be "just because"

> why Building a program language is like poetry. Everyone does it at some point, just most of us know never to share it.

saghm 8mo ago
That just moves the question to "why is this one being shared" then. I don't think "because the authors didn't know better than to avoid sharing it like 'most of us'" is a particularly good answer.

andyferris 8mo ago

The README on gitlab at least has a sentence or two on that: https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily > An interpreted language with a focus on expressiveness and type safety Personally I think typed scripting languages could be the future. They should support AOT compilation where necessary.

keyle 8mo ago
Why do you think that's the future? Isn't a waste to essentially reinterpret an entire program that may be run 5000 times a day? AOT compilation, how is that different than make && run? At some point, you have a compiled language, if it's quick to compile, you're doing the AOT yourself, the scripting is an illusion. Pun intended.
- nine_k 8mo ago
  Isn't it a waste to run a test suite for a program that would run 1M times a day in production? The key adjective here is successfully run. You want to detect any errors as early as possible. Ideally even at the early stages of writing the script, when a typechecker is already able to point at certain errors, and thus help avoid missteps in further design.
- Syzygies 8mo ago
  > Isn't a waste to essentially reinterpret an entire program that may be run 5000 times a day? This is a dated prejudice that I shared. To get started coding with AI I made a dozen language comparison project for a toy math problem. F# floored me with how fast it was, nearly edging out C and Rust on my leaderboard, twice as fast as OCaml, and faster than various compiled languages. Compiling could in principle be fastest, if we had compilers that profiled hours of execution before optimizing code, and only then for "stable" problems. No one writes a compiler like this. In practice, Just In Time interpreters are getting all the love, and it shows. They adapt to the computation. My dated prejudice did not allow for this.
nofriend 8mo ago
a statically typed aot compiled scripting language is... not
- nine_k 8mo ago
  "Scripting" is a role: an embedded, human-friendly, compact language, also suitable for interactive work / REPL. (Laugh all you want, but Haskell has a rather nice REPL, and can work as a scripting language.)
- LoganDark 8mo ago
  Luau gets pretty close to statically typed and AOT compiled now. It's still a scripting language. Even C or Rust can be a scripting language. You just integrate the toolchain to your app, same as every other scripting language.
  - mastermage 8mo ago
    +1 for Luau which is just realy good.
- satvikpendem 8mo ago
  I script with Rust via cargo-script, it works great. Scripting is a task for when you want to achieve something in one file instead of a full blown application. It is not about the language, you can script in C or assembly if you so chose.
bonesss 8mo ago
F# and C# are typed scripting languages. F# is quite similar to python in script form (.fsx), and has OCamls expressiveness, exhaustive pattern matching, and type inference. That results in highly expressive, terse, and ergonomic domain code. The .Net VM now supports AOT compilation. The future is now-ish :)

paulddraper 8mo ago

From the link: > Key features of Lily: > Built-in template mode > Embed/extend in C > Single-inheritance classes > Exceptions > Generics > Algebraic data types (with Option and Result predefined).

andsoitis 8mo ago
That’s what. Not why.
- paulddraper 8mo ago
  The reason it exists is to provide those features when programming computers.
- nine_k 8mo ago
  The why: because Lua, Python, JavaScript, Janet, etc lack many or all these features. And each of these features is known to make life easier for a human programmer.
  - dismalaf 8mo ago
    Looking through that list of features, Ruby (the dynamic language I know best) has all but 1 built-in (and the other can be added with Gems). I'm guessing Python probably has them all too (but I don't know Python that well). They're pretty common. So the why still isn't clear.
    - nine_k 8mo ago
      Is Ruby easy to embed in a C program?
      - bandrami 8mo ago
        That was originally the point of Ruby
      - debugnik 8mo ago

keychera 8mo ago

I am curious as well. some past readme has Why sections and I am not sure why they are removed/changed this have "Why" section https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily/-/blob/d3ace2907747106d9d75e22c4963aa09de14835a/README.md https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily/-/blob/d3ace2907747106... this have "How Lily stands out from other languages:" section https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily/-/blob/785a88534cced5331cd226460dc958a528ac3ccf/README.md https://gitlab.com/FascinatedBox/lily/-/blob/785a88534cced53...

Nevermark 8mo ago
> More importantly, this design makes it easy to compose whole programs that will never be paused by a garbage collection by avoiding cyclical structures. Or by "breaking" cycles, which will trigger the reference count deallocation.

poulpy123 8mo ago

99.9% of the time it will be "just because"