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Show HN: Xoscript

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Re: Show HN: Xoscript

#31

Post by gabordemooij »

hnlmorg wrote: post #24

I’m curious about some of the design choices. Having a period / full stop as the EOL punctuation rather than a semicolon is a nice idea. But personally I think the idea of a line terminator is antiquated. Using square brackets for strings feels superfluous when you have to quote the strings anyway. Was there a reason for this design? I don’t like the “stop” keyword either. Is that doing anything special that the ‘.’…

I would love to further discuss some syntax issues.

- STOP is from telegraphs. \n is also allowed.

- The assymetric string boundaries (brackets) allow you to embed quotes/boundaries without escaping.

what is terse about the loops?

any further thoughts about EOL?

Re: Show HN: Xoscript

#32

Post by gabordemooij »

ddtaylor wrote: post #20

Interesting to see, Gabor. I don't like the "stop" thing. I think the verbosity can be tuned down a bit in that case, but I understand the small-talk message passing need for "Out write". Am I allowed to use just write "out" instead of "Out"? I assume case sensitivity, but I couldn't find in the docs anything about it. I have used RedBeanPHP for many things and contributed a bit. Thank you.

Out is used in a static/class-like sense here, hence the uppercase letter. It means it should not be treated as an instance (although it technically does not really matter).

Re: Show HN: Xoscript

#33

Post by gabordemooij »

Muromec wrote: post #25
tshaddox wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kinda funny. There is a popular claim that goes something like "silence or inaction is implicit support for the status quo." The point is that there's not really such a thing as "not taking sides." I don't quite agree with that, simply because no matter how many things you do take a stance on, there's always an infinite number of things that you haven't taken a stance on. But when you go out of your way to expli…

The stronger form of it is "Inaction in the face of oppression supports the oppressor."

I don't feel oppressed. I'm just happy with my life.

Re: Show HN: Xoscript

#34

Post by inopinatus » 

    The None object represents emptiness, or better still, the absence of information. On occasion, you will receive this object as an answer to a message, in case of the result being nothing. The most essential question you could ask the None object is: None?. The answer will always read True.
I came for language documentation, I stayed for the existential crisis.

Re: Show HN: Xoscript

#35

Post by badsectoracula »

gabordemooij wrote: post #33
Muromec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stronger form of it is "Inaction in the face of oppression supports the oppressor."

I don't feel oppressed. I'm just happy with my life.

In this quote you'd be the one being inactive, not the oppressed nor the oppressor.

Re: Show HN: Xoscript

#36

Post by hnlmorg »

gabordemooij wrote: post #31
hnlmorg wrote: post #24

I’m curious about some of the design choices. Having a period / full stop as the EOL punctuation rather than a semicolon is a nice idea. But personally I think the idea of a line terminator is antiquated. Using square brackets for strings feels superfluous when you have to quote the strings anyway. Was there a reason for this design? I don’t like the “stop” keyword either. Is that doing anything special that the ‘.’…

I would love to further discuss some syntax issues. - STOP is from telegraphs. \n is also allowed. - The assymetric string boundaries (brackets) allow you to embed quotes/boundaries without escaping. what is terse about the loops? any further thoughts about EOL?

1. ‘stop’ reads like a change of execution flow (like ‘continue’, ‘break’, and ‘return’) rather than an ASCII control code. I appreciate you’re taking that from telegraphs but I wonder if you’re better off using the control code name (LF) instead?

2. Interesting. Have you got any examples of this? Every example I’ve seen thus far has been

    [‘string constant’]
3. I might have misunderstood the fizzbuzz example https://xoscript.com/docs.xo?chapter=examples but it looked like the following syntax set up a for-loop as a closure:

    { :i
        …
    } * 101
It was a little surprising because usually with languages that lean heavily into English keywords (eg the Pascal/Algol/Basic derivatives) you’d see these control flows use keywords like FOR. Heck, even C-derived languages do too.

Now I’m not saying the syntax is bad. In fact part of me rather likes it. But it definitely surprised me.

Similarly the IF conditions surprised me with their tenseness. Though i do like their syntax too.

Regarding the fizzbuzz example, why do some conditions have TRUE while others do not. Eg

    (i = 0) continue.
True appears to be implicit.

    (i % 15 = 0) true: {
        …
    ), continue.
True here is explicit.

Is it because closures require that explicitness?

Re: Show HN: Xoscript

#37

Post by hnlmorg »

pygy_ wrote: post #27
gabordemooij wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and.. I want to avoid having to add a coc. Can try.

- Why did you close your eyes ? - So that the room will be empty. Your copy reads as "I'm a radical centrist and will die trying to preserve the status quo". As it usually goes you'd then tolerate hateful, bigoted folks in the name of openness and Free Speech Absolutism™ (which is totally non-political /s) and chase away women, minorities and folks who care about them. If this isn't your intention, a CoC is the way t…

I don’t think that’s fair. But i do get how others might read into that too.

Personally i read it more like “this project avoids having any political stance.” Similar to the HN guidelines on politics.

However i do agree that it’s better to remove that message and have no comment on politics, than to comment so visibly that you’re unwilling to comment. Even if you read charitably into the message, it’s still just a distraction on valuable page real estate.

Re: Show HN: Xoscript

#39

Post by tinfoilhatter »

selfsimilar wrote: post #7
dang wrote: post #47

[stub for offtopicness] Reminders from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : " Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. " " Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. "

"The language is intentionally neutral and apolitical, without any stance on social or political issues." I don't applaud or condemn this, but it's strange that it's on the home and history pages. Putting this in a code of conduct document for collaborators might make sense, but on the home page? Maybe I'm the weird one, but for most languages I consider them a tool. So it's like going to the hardware store and seein…

Seems to be a newly emerging pattern, with now at least two examples. Here's the other one I'm aware of (from the Gleam programming language homepage):

Friendly As a community, we want to be friendly too. People from around the world, of all backgrounds, genders, and experience levels are welcome and respected equally. See our community code of conduct for more.

Black lives matter. Trans rights are human rights. No nazi bullsh*t.

[1] https://gleam.run/

Re: Show HN: Xoscript

#40

Post by lagniappe »

gabordemooij wrote: post #30
pygy_ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Why did you close your eyes ? - So that the room will be empty. Your copy reads as "I'm a radical centrist and will die trying to preserve the status quo". As it usually goes you'd then tolerate hateful, bigoted folks in the name of openness and Free Speech Absolutism™ (which is totally non-political /s) and chase away women, minorities and folks who care about them. If this isn't your intention, a CoC is the way t…

I dont care what you or anyone else thinks. I give you a free tool. That's all.

We need more people like this.
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