Miscellaneous Programming Language

Posted on: 2022-09-27

Books

• Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages link

Opinion Pieces

Adventures in Dynamic Software

link

Introduced carp which I haven't heard of before.

Carp borrows its looks from Clojure but the runtime semantics are much closer to those of ML or Rust. Types are inferred but can be annotated for readability using the the keyword (see below).

Memory management is handled by static analysis, a value is owned by the function where it was created. When a value is returned or passed to another function the initial function will give up ownership of it and any subsequent use will lead to a compiler error. To temporarily lend a value to another function (for example to print it) a reference must be created, using the ref special form (or the & reader macro).

Bret Victor and has links to his videos.

• Don't draw dead fish
• Bret Victor - The Future of Programming

Talks about the Glamourous Toolkit which is an editor for SmallTalk/Pharo.

Bolt compiler

Articles on how the compiler was created.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33793108

Async discussion

• What color is your function

Videos

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS9MbmO_ssyCzjONn8v796nUGRXMX389H https://gamefromscratch.com/odin-programming-language/

Linear Types

• Linear Types in Austral

Linear types allow for a simplified model for handling lifetimes, and as used in Austral capability system. As originally described they are threaded. Later in the document a more ergonomic 'borrowing' style is allowed (as taken from Rust). Australs 'borrowing' is more limited, but usage is more clear.

Things to explore

• Duals of types
  • AOS like rep of types
  • Can we define a type, and then have (perhaps multiple) duals, that compiler generates to move between
  • Can the programmer define a dual? What would the syntax look like
• We don't actually want AOS, we want an interleaved style, such that it's like a fixed length array of T
• Other fat pointers
  • Zig has a bit/or sub byte/word sized pointer
  • Zig has sentinel pointer
  • Can we have a kind of pointer to the interleaved type
• Error Models
• Value semantics
• Programming Model
• Intermediate Representations

Post C++ Languages

• 2022 The Year of C++ Successor Languages
• C++ evolution vs C++ successor languages. Circle's feature pragmas let you select your own "evolver language."

Naming Conventions

• snake/camel case discussion Hacker News
• Argues Snake Case is faster to comprehend

Language Adoption

• Blog Post of Barriers to Adoption
• Reddit Language Adoption Discussion

General

• Learn X in Y minutes for Languages