7 ms·

The Lux Programming Language

85 points by eduardoejp 11y ago

erichmond 11y ago
Just curious, is this for fun, or is the goal to compete with clojure/scala etc?
- eduardoejp 11y ago
  The goal is to compete. This is just version 0.1, so the release was mostly so people could get a taste for it. But version 0.2 will come with all features (except type-inference and code-sharing between platforms). Those two will come in subsequent releases. I'll also be working on finishing the prelude (i.e. lux.lux) and expanding the standard library.
platz 11y ago
Describing Canonicity as a problem that that needs 'hacks' to work around seems a little disingenuous.
- eduardoejp 11y ago
  platz >> Describing Canonicity as a problem that that needs 'hacks' to work around seems a little disingenuous. If by "canonicity" you mean having 1 canonical instance of a type-class per type and by "hack" you mean using records as structs/modules, then I think you're not really appreciating the coolness of Lux's approach. Not only is Lux's approach simpler (just use records vs having to implement a complete type-class subsystem), but it's based on ideas that have existed for years in the ML world. ML's signatures & structures are not canonical, and yet all you hear is the ML guys praising their system, without a drop of envy for type-classes. Also, by having everything be based on records instead of ML's system, I get extra benefits and the language becomes much simpler. Some folks in the Haskell community have already talked about the issues that I address with Lux's module system. http://www.haskellforall.com/2012/05/scrap-your-type-classes.html http://www.haskellforall.com/2012/05/scrap-your-type-classes... Plus, using macros & the type-data in the compiler state, I've already conceived how a macro could be made that does code-transformations that make it seem as if you had globally-scoped type classes, as in Haskell. However, I still prefer ML's approach.
HerrMonnezza 11y ago
How does it compare to Shen? http://www.shenlanguage.org/ http://www.shenlanguage.org/
- tormeh 11y ago
  "runs under CLisp, SBCL, Clojure, Scheme, Ruby, Python, the JVM, Haskell and Javascript" Wow, someone really likes writing compilers...
  - chadzawistowski 11y ago
    Mark Tarver originally wrote Qi, which exclusively ran on top of Common Lisp. Qi was refactored as Shen, which is implemented on a small core and is thus very portable. IIRC Mark only maintains the Common Lisp implementations, and the rest were implemented by the community.
    - tormeh 11y ago
      How can something, no matter how small core it has, be very portable from CL to Haskell?
      - chadzawistowski 11y ago
        Shen doesn't execute directly, it's compiled to K-lambda, a very small, simple, lisp-as-bytecode. K-lambda is very portable, and wherever K-lambda can run, so can Shen. Details here: http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/klambda.htm http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/klambda.htm
  - cheepin 11y ago
    Interesting to see how many of these overlap. For example: Lux->Clojure->JVM Lux->Ruby->JVM Lux->Haskell->Javascript Any more that I missed?
    - yellowapple 11y ago
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- hnrem 11y ago
  I have to ask: why aren't you using the reply link?
  - S4M 11y ago
    I am wondering the same actually. I wonder if he could paste his comments as replies and then a moderator could make dead the ones left as main comments. As it is the threads are quite hard to follow.
    - eduardoejp 11y ago
      Sorry. I don't talk to talk a lot on HN, :P
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Probably because he doesn't know that while the link doesn't show up immediately on the main thread for new comments, he can visit the comment he wants to reply to itself, and it will have one.
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jtwebman 11y ago
What are the goals of the language?
- eduardoejp 11y ago
  Simplicity My ideal of simplicity is more like Haskell's than Clojure's. Clojure strives to be easy-to-use, but in the process, both the language and standard library have evolved a lot of convoluted and often redundant code (you can take a look at the definition of map to get an idea: https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/028af0e0b271aa558ea4... https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/028af0e0b271aa558ea4...) Haskell, on the other hand, is a very simple language that seeks simplicity at the library/API level. Lux is more oriented towards that. Portability I code in Clojure and love the fact that I can work both on the JVM and on JavaScript. However, Clojure's current approach to portability lacks in several ways. I've seen other languages that compile to other platforms (like Scala & Haskell) and they all seem to have limited approaches. I've come up with a new idea for how to approach the subject that should yield highly portable code that will be trivially reusable. I've yet to add it to the compiler but it's gonna come in one of the upcoming releases. Speed Right now the code generated isn't being optimized in any way (it's v0.1 after all), but I've come with several ideas to make it fast and by the time I'm done, it will be faster than Clojure, and maybe Scala (I'm not sure about Scala, since I'm not a Scala dev and don't know how fast it is). My goal with Lux is to get it as close to Java's speed as I possibly can. Extensibility Lux will allow people to access the compiler state in order to get useful information for macros. There is already a macro (using) that takes advantage of the typing information in the compiler to open up structs ala SML's open. The pattern-matching macro is also open to extensibility and you can craft your own custom syntax to do crazy things with it. The prelude (lux.lux) already comes with 2 such pattern-matching extensions.
  - jonnybgood 11y ago
    It sounds like you want Frege, no? https://github.com/Frege/frege https://github.com/Frege/frege
    - eduardoejp 11y ago
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giancarlostoro 11y ago
So if I were to learn a Lisp language for the first time, would Lux be worth my time? Also why not setup an IRC channel? edit: Typo
- mej10 11y ago
  If you are learning a Lisp for the first time, you should stick with something established that has good resources for learning available. Scheme is a good choice to start with, and eventually you will want to learn either Common Lisp or Clojure.
- eduardoejp 11y ago
  Lux is still in diapers, but everything should be completed in the next few months. >> So if I were to learn a Lisp language for the first time, would Lux be worth my time? That depends. Do you like sophisticated types ala Haskell? Are you interested in functional programming? Do you want a language that runs on established platforms such as the JVM or Node.js/IO.js? If you answered yes to all of those, Lux welcomes you. >> Also why not setup an IRC channel? I'm not much of an IRC guy myself, but a channel can definitely be made. I won't be present most of the time, since I've got work & college to worry about, but an IRC channel can be made.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >Lux is still in diapers, but everything should be completed in the next few months. How accurate is that? In the sense that it's something heard from a lot of projects, and then years pass and they're not ready yet or are abandoned. Is there some tangibles to support this? E.g. "creator had done some other languages in the past succesfully so he knows the timescales involved", "author is paid to work on this full time", etc?
    - eduardoejp 11y ago
      >> How accurate is that? In the sense that it's something heard from a lot of projects, and then years pass and they're not ready yet or are abandoned. Basically, I know how much I've done so far and how much needs to be done, so I can kinda guesstimate how much is necessary. Taking things this far has taken me 5 and a half months, and the vast majority of the work has already been done. v0.2 will just expand the standard library (which is a piece of cake), add a few missing features that aren't that hard to implement, and make some improvements to compiler speed. After that, I'll just be focusing on adding compiler optimizations and porting the compiler to ClojureScript to generate JavaScript. >> "creator had done some other languages in the past succesfully so he knows the timescales involved" This is my first language made for public consumption. >> "author is paid to work on this full time" I sure as hell would like that, but I'm working part time & going to college. With that said, I've gotten quite far just by extracting time from weekends and working late at night. And since most of the work has been done, I've be surprised if Lux wasn't finished before the end of the year. I'll also be making sure not to tie myself with other projects as much as I can to be able to dedicate all the time I can to Lux.
ilaksh 11y ago
I feel like there should be a way to re-use algorithms and data structures across programming languages and platforms automatically. Sort of like a CLR/JVM etc. but really a common exchange format that could work across different VMs or systems. A little bit like how math can formally describe diverse systems, except you could automatically process/translate this format.
- notduncansmith 11y ago
  The problem is that even if two languages each have, say, the Set data type, the implementation of those features and how they interact with the language may be radically different. The closest we have to what you're describing right now probably exists in compile-to-JS languages, where one language's implementation of a particular data type or standard library function can (at least in its compiled form) be used by another language. That, or maybe something at one layer of abstraction up from LLVM - but I'm no expert.
Expez 11y ago
You'd do well to stick with existing syntax conventions. People care about this stuff and introducing changes just because you can seems like a bad idea if you want your language to get wide adoption. So I'd like to see ; be restored as the comment character, to match every other lisp ever written, and you should probably use / for namespacing like in Clojure. The use of / for namespacing is already a well established convention, because we do that all the time on the web.
- eduardoejp 11y ago
  Your concerns are well founded but what's going on is this. Import paths will be using / for the separation of the path, so you'll be writing things like: (import foo/bar/bar #as baz) I haven't added imports yet, but they're coming for v0.2 Regarding ; as comments and not namespacing, I chose it mostly because: a) Using / for namespacing leaves the / function in a weird position. b) I originally wanted to use : for namespacing, but ended up choosing it for the type-annotating macro, so I settled for ;. c) ## Was chosen for comments because I get to save on reserved characters. For instance, Clojure reserves an awful lot of characters (, . / ^ # @ ~ ' ` ; : \), whereas Lux only reserves 2 (# ;). So I chose ## to save on characters and because if you squint, ; kinda looks like : d) Ultimately, there is nothing written in stone and I can change my mind about syntax, but I don't see how rocking the boat a little bit with the syntax will cause much trouble.
  - adamwk 11y ago
    Syntax is always a prime candidate for bicycle shedding so they'll always be brought up but uncommon syntax is jarring at first. One problem I see is how overloaded the `#` character is right now. I think one problem that Scala is stuck with is how many things for which `_` is used.
goldfeld 11y ago
Why EPL? I use Clojure everyday and I know why it is EPL'd, but I wish it was another license since it's incompatible with the GPL. Couldn't you consider a GPL-friendly license? It sets the tone for the community.
- eduardoejp 11y ago
  I am not much of a licenses buff, so I just went with EPL because it sounded reasonable. Anything that looks like *GPL will be avoided because of its virality. How is EPL incompatible with GPL and what licenses are friendly to it? Apache License v2? (That's another one I was considering)
  - unfunco 11y ago
    You're avoiding a license because it's popular?
    - afshin 11y ago
      I think by "virality" what was meant was that GPL libraries "infect" non-GPL because the larger work must also be released as GPL. For programming languages, though, this should not be an issue, unless somebody is bundling the whole interpreter/compiler with their app.
      - eduardoejp 11y ago
        In the future, I plan to rewrite the Lux compiler in Lux itself, and one of the reasons is to allow people to embed it and use it's API. That way, if someone wants to create an online Lux REPL for people to try Lux, it won't be hard for them to do so.
        goldfeld 11y ago
        The GPL allows you to modify the source and provide a service on a public server without having to share your modifications.* But I understand if you prefer a more permissíve license. Lots of people go with MIT License, it's very short, permissive and compatible with the GPL. Apache v2 is also compatible. See here about EPL being incompatible: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/using-the-gpl-for-eclipse-plug-ins https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/using-the-gpl-for-eclips... Last time I tried understanding the key subtleties of the EPL I came out empty handed, but it would seem it's more viral than the permissive licenses above, bit less so than the GPL. * That's why the AGPL exists, so someone working on a Lux REPL would only have to show the code for his online Lux modifications if Lux was AGPL.

85 points by eduardoejp 11y ago

erichmond 11y ago

Just curious, is this for fun, or is the goal to compete with clojure/scala etc?

eduardoejp 11y ago
The goal is to compete. This is just version 0.1, so the release was mostly so people could get a taste for it. But version 0.2 will come with all features (except type-inference and code-sharing between platforms). Those two will come in subsequent releases. I'll also be working on finishing the prelude (i.e. lux.lux) and expanding the standard library.

platz 11y ago

Describing Canonicity as a problem that that needs 'hacks' to work around seems a little disingenuous.

eduardoejp 11y ago
platz >> Describing Canonicity as a problem that that needs 'hacks' to work around seems a little disingenuous. If by "canonicity" you mean having 1 canonical instance of a type-class per type and by "hack" you mean using records as structs/modules, then I think you're not really appreciating the coolness of Lux's approach. Not only is Lux's approach simpler (just use records vs having to implement a complete type-class subsystem), but it's based on ideas that have existed for years in the ML world. ML's signatures & structures are not canonical, and yet all you hear is the ML guys praising their system, without a drop of envy for type-classes. Also, by having everything be based on records instead of ML's system, I get extra benefits and the language becomes much simpler. Some folks in the Haskell community have already talked about the issues that I address with Lux's module system. http://www.haskellforall.com/2012/05/scrap-your-type-classes.html http://www.haskellforall.com/2012/05/scrap-your-type-classes... Plus, using macros & the type-data in the compiler state, I've already conceived how a macro could be made that does code-transformations that make it seem as if you had globally-scoped type classes, as in Haskell. However, I still prefer ML's approach.

HerrMonnezza 11y ago

How does it compare to Shen? http://www.shenlanguage.org/ http://www.shenlanguage.org/

tormeh 11y ago
"runs under CLisp, SBCL, Clojure, Scheme, Ruby, Python, the JVM, Haskell and Javascript" Wow, someone really likes writing compilers...
- chadzawistowski 11y ago
  Mark Tarver originally wrote Qi, which exclusively ran on top of Common Lisp. Qi was refactored as Shen, which is implemented on a small core and is thus very portable. IIRC Mark only maintains the Common Lisp implementations, and the rest were implemented by the community.
  - tormeh 11y ago
    How can something, no matter how small core it has, be very portable from CL to Haskell?
    - chadzawistowski 11y ago
      Shen doesn't execute directly, it's compiled to K-lambda, a very small, simple, lisp-as-bytecode. K-lambda is very portable, and wherever K-lambda can run, so can Shen. Details here: http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/klambda.htm http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/klambda.htm
- cheepin 11y ago
  Interesting to see how many of these overlap. For example: Lux->Clojure->JVM Lux->Ruby->JVM Lux->Haskell->Javascript Any more that I missed?
  - yellowapple 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

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hnrem 11y ago
I have to ask: why aren't you using the reply link?
- S4M 11y ago
  I am wondering the same actually. I wonder if he could paste his comments as replies and then a moderator could make dead the ones left as main comments. As it is the threads are quite hard to follow.
  - eduardoejp 11y ago
    Sorry. I don't talk to talk a lot on HN, :P
- coldtea 11y ago
  Probably because he doesn't know that while the link doesn't show up immediately on the main thread for new comments, he can visit the comment he wants to reply to itself, and it will have one.

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jtwebman 11y ago

What are the goals of the language?

eduardoejp 11y ago
Simplicity My ideal of simplicity is more like Haskell's than Clojure's. Clojure strives to be easy-to-use, but in the process, both the language and standard library have evolved a lot of convoluted and often redundant code (you can take a look at the definition of map to get an idea: https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/028af0e0b271aa558ea4... https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/028af0e0b271aa558ea4...) Haskell, on the other hand, is a very simple language that seeks simplicity at the library/API level. Lux is more oriented towards that. Portability I code in Clojure and love the fact that I can work both on the JVM and on JavaScript. However, Clojure's current approach to portability lacks in several ways. I've seen other languages that compile to other platforms (like Scala & Haskell) and they all seem to have limited approaches. I've come up with a new idea for how to approach the subject that should yield highly portable code that will be trivially reusable. I've yet to add it to the compiler but it's gonna come in one of the upcoming releases. Speed Right now the code generated isn't being optimized in any way (it's v0.1 after all), but I've come with several ideas to make it fast and by the time I'm done, it will be faster than Clojure, and maybe Scala (I'm not sure about Scala, since I'm not a Scala dev and don't know how fast it is). My goal with Lux is to get it as close to Java's speed as I possibly can. Extensibility Lux will allow people to access the compiler state in order to get useful information for macros. There is already a macro (using) that takes advantage of the typing information in the compiler to open up structs ala SML's open. The pattern-matching macro is also open to extensibility and you can craft your own custom syntax to do crazy things with it. The prelude (lux.lux) already comes with 2 such pattern-matching extensions.
- jonnybgood 11y ago
  It sounds like you want Frege, no? https://github.com/Frege/frege https://github.com/Frege/frege
  - eduardoejp 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

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giancarlostoro 11y ago

So if I were to learn a Lisp language for the first time, would Lux be worth my time? Also why not setup an IRC channel? edit: Typo

mej10 11y ago
If you are learning a Lisp for the first time, you should stick with something established that has good resources for learning available. Scheme is a good choice to start with, and eventually you will want to learn either Common Lisp or Clojure.
eduardoejp 11y ago
Lux is still in diapers, but everything should be completed in the next few months. >> So if I were to learn a Lisp language for the first time, would Lux be worth my time? That depends. Do you like sophisticated types ala Haskell? Are you interested in functional programming? Do you want a language that runs on established platforms such as the JVM or Node.js/IO.js? If you answered yes to all of those, Lux welcomes you. >> Also why not setup an IRC channel? I'm not much of an IRC guy myself, but a channel can definitely be made. I won't be present most of the time, since I've got work & college to worry about, but an IRC channel can be made.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Lux is still in diapers, but everything should be completed in the next few months. How accurate is that? In the sense that it's something heard from a lot of projects, and then years pass and they're not ready yet or are abandoned. Is there some tangibles to support this? E.g. "creator had done some other languages in the past succesfully so he knows the timescales involved", "author is paid to work on this full time", etc?
  - eduardoejp 11y ago
    >> How accurate is that? In the sense that it's something heard from a lot of projects, and then years pass and they're not ready yet or are abandoned. Basically, I know how much I've done so far and how much needs to be done, so I can kinda guesstimate how much is necessary. Taking things this far has taken me 5 and a half months, and the vast majority of the work has already been done. v0.2 will just expand the standard library (which is a piece of cake), add a few missing features that aren't that hard to implement, and make some improvements to compiler speed. After that, I'll just be focusing on adding compiler optimizations and porting the compiler to ClojureScript to generate JavaScript. >> "creator had done some other languages in the past succesfully so he knows the timescales involved" This is my first language made for public consumption. >> "author is paid to work on this full time" I sure as hell would like that, but I'm working part time & going to college. With that said, I've gotten quite far just by extracting time from weekends and working late at night. And since most of the work has been done, I've be surprised if Lux wasn't finished before the end of the year. I'll also be making sure not to tie myself with other projects as much as I can to be able to dedicate all the time I can to Lux.

ilaksh 11y ago

I feel like there should be a way to re-use algorithms and data structures across programming languages and platforms automatically. Sort of like a CLR/JVM etc. but really a common exchange format that could work across different VMs or systems. A little bit like how math can formally describe diverse systems, except you could automatically process/translate this format.

notduncansmith 11y ago
The problem is that even if two languages each have, say, the Set data type, the implementation of those features and how they interact with the language may be radically different. The closest we have to what you're describing right now probably exists in compile-to-JS languages, where one language's implementation of a particular data type or standard library function can (at least in its compiled form) be used by another language. That, or maybe something at one layer of abstraction up from LLVM - but I'm no expert.

Expez 11y ago

You'd do well to stick with existing syntax conventions. People care about this stuff and introducing changes just because you can seems like a bad idea if you want your language to get wide adoption. So I'd like to see ; be restored as the comment character, to match every other lisp ever written, and you should probably use / for namespacing like in Clojure. The use of / for namespacing is already a well established convention, because we do that all the time on the web.

eduardoejp 11y ago
Your concerns are well founded but what's going on is this. Import paths will be using / for the separation of the path, so you'll be writing things like: (import foo/bar/bar #as baz) I haven't added imports yet, but they're coming for v0.2 Regarding ; as comments and not namespacing, I chose it mostly because: a) Using / for namespacing leaves the / function in a weird position. b) I originally wanted to use : for namespacing, but ended up choosing it for the type-annotating macro, so I settled for ;. c) ## Was chosen for comments because I get to save on reserved characters. For instance, Clojure reserves an awful lot of characters (, . / ^ # @ ~ ' ` ; : \), whereas Lux only reserves 2 (# ;). So I chose ## to save on characters and because if you squint, ; kinda looks like : d) Ultimately, there is nothing written in stone and I can change my mind about syntax, but I don't see how rocking the boat a little bit with the syntax will cause much trouble.
- adamwk 11y ago
  Syntax is always a prime candidate for bicycle shedding so they'll always be brought up but uncommon syntax is jarring at first. One problem I see is how overloaded the `#` character is right now. I think one problem that Scala is stuck with is how many things for which `_` is used.

goldfeld 11y ago

Why EPL? I use Clojure everyday and I know why it is EPL'd, but I wish it was another license since it's incompatible with the GPL. Couldn't you consider a GPL-friendly license? It sets the tone for the community.

eduardoejp 11y ago
I am not much of a licenses buff, so I just went with EPL because it sounded reasonable. Anything that looks like *GPL will be avoided because of its virality. How is EPL incompatible with GPL and what licenses are friendly to it? Apache License v2? (That's another one I was considering)
- unfunco 11y ago
  You're avoiding a license because it's popular?
  - afshin 11y ago
    I think by "virality" what was meant was that GPL libraries "infect" non-GPL because the larger work must also be released as GPL. For programming languages, though, this should not be an issue, unless somebody is bundling the whole interpreter/compiler with their app.
    - eduardoejp 11y ago
      In the future, I plan to rewrite the Lux compiler in Lux itself, and one of the reasons is to allow people to embed it and use it's API. That way, if someone wants to create an online Lux REPL for people to try Lux, it won't be hard for them to do so.
      - goldfeld 11y ago
        The GPL allows you to modify the source and provide a service on a public server without having to share your modifications.* But I understand if you prefer a more permissíve license. Lots of people go with MIT License, it's very short, permissive and compatible with the GPL. Apache v2 is also compatible. See here about EPL being incompatible: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/using-the-gpl-for-eclipse-plug-ins https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/using-the-gpl-for-eclips... Last time I tried understanding the key subtleties of the EPL I came out empty handed, but it would seem it's more viral than the permissive licenses above, bit less so than the GPL. * That's why the AGPL exists, so someone working on a Lux REPL would only have to show the code for his online Lux modifications if Lux was AGPL.