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Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

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Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#121

Post by skrishnamurthi »

emidln wrote: post #74
adjkant wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pyret is inspired from Racket, which starts at step 1 with functional programming. It's not about readability or getting people to learn as fast as possible to write basic code, but to try and teach core program design principles easily and build a solid base within a single semester. The syntax is not as clean as Python, but it offers much more clarity in terms of testing, signatures, and offers a very interesting m…

If the goal is to teach functional programming with testing and signatures, is the awkward syntax (that isn't really very close to C#, Java, or Python) better than a set of macros on top of typed Racket? It seems like it'd be easy to define a typedracket-derived #lang where you had to write: (define (sum a b) : [-> Integer Integer Integer] (where (= (sum 0 1) 1) (= (sum 2 2) 4)) (+ a b)) And make the type signature a…

It's not better [1], it's different. There's Typed Racket for people who want that. But many people suffer from visceral negative reactions when confronted with any kind of parenthetical syntax. Pyret was initially designed for them, and has since added on several of its own innovations.

[1] I, personally, love parenthetical syntax.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#122

Post by swuecho »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #89
gfodor wrote: post #52

I've never understood the idea of a 'teaching' programming language. (Modulo examples like Logo and Scratch, which offer much more than a language as part of a wider teaching/computing system.) You spend all this time ramping up on a language, toolchain, library, etc, that you will eventually be unable to leverage beyond a certain point since it is not one used by everyday programmers. The delta in "quality learning"…

The idea is that the concepts of CS are universal, regardless of programming language. So instead of using a programming language that has been designed for real world use (carved with the footprints of a thousand language hackers, full of awkward inconsistencies, warts, and good-enough-for-nows), teach in a teaching language - a programming language that is very regular, with very simple semantics, not necessarily d…

If they are universal, what is wrong by using a reall word language?

>"full of awkward inconsistencies, warts, and good-enough-for-nows"

can not agree with 'full'. but Is there a teaching language better? I do not think so.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#123

Post by posterboy »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #5

Honestly imo Python is the best language to start with for learning. It has all the basic constructs of both functional and object oriented programming in plain english without a bunch of syntax to worry about. I personally think it's the most readable language. it's also quite intuitive imo. Lastly, there's a fantastic community and instant help is available for all skill levels but especially beginners on #python o…

>has somewhat odd syntax

says the programmer using significant whitespace

runs for cover

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#124

Post by jpolitz »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #5

Honestly imo Python is the best language to start with for learning. It has all the basic constructs of both functional and object oriented programming in plain english without a bunch of syntax to worry about. I personally think it's the most readable language. it's also quite intuitive imo. Lastly, there's a fantastic community and instant help is available for all skill levels but especially beginners on #python o…

The readability, unintuitive, and "odd syntax" comments are somewhat subjective, though I'd curious to hear what parts are odd and unintuitive for you.

I linked to a perspective on where Pyret fits in in another similar answer:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13187379

We also may have different definitions of what a "beginner" needs for community and help.

Pyret is used in middle and high school classes (along with the undergraduate level). Those students, nor their teachers, are likely to know what IRC is or how to seek help on it. We do a lot of curriculum development, and professional development workshops in the summer are a major way we interact with these teachers and set them up with a high-bandwidth way to communicate with us over the year (which is direct email or mailing lists).

Prompt and detailed help is certainly available for teachers (who then help their students), and it's coming from the folks who designed the curriculum and the language together. Those mailing lists are public (pyret-discuss [1] and bootstrap-teachers [2]), and anyone is welcome to ask away.

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pyret-discuss [2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/bootstrap-discuss

Of course, Pyret doesn't have the huge community, Stack Overflow presence, documentation maturity, etc. of Python (or other major languages) for general programming. That takes time and consistent effort, but the lack of it doesn't negate the reasons Pyret is good for its current use cases.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#125

Post by smnplk »

mattangriffel wrote: post #4

As someone who teaches coding to beginners for a living (I founded One Month and I teach Python to business students at Columbia University), this language looks really intimidating to beginners. Maybe Pyret isn't for beginners, and it's intended to teach people who already have some basic knowledge more advanced concepts like functional programming. That's fine. But to a total beginner, the syntax of Pyret is defini…

>> Maybe Pyret isn't for beginners, and it's intended to teach people who already have some basic knowledge more advanced concepts like functional programming I often hear people say that functional programming is advanced concept. I think students are able to learn functional programming as their first model of computation, before they are even exposed to Turing machine computing. It's not like you have to first learn C, then some java and only after you become familiar with OO, you have enough knowledge to grasp functions as first class citizens.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#127

Post by jswrenn »

dom0 wrote: post #114
jswrenn wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Languages such as C, Java, Python, and Rust are usually designed by experienced programmers in industry, for experienced programmers in industry. Pyret, on the other hand, is designed by computer science educators, for computer science education. This does not preclude Pyret from being a useful language for general-purpose programming; it just means that language design decisions are driven foremost by pedagogy. For…

> Languages such as C, Java, Python, and Rust are usually designed by experienced programmers in industry, for experienced programmers in industry. Pyret, on the other hand, is designed by computer science educators, for computer science education. Honestly, looking at the examples on the Pyret main page makes me think that this isn't a good approach at all. I have been in software engineering for many years now and…

What characteristics makes a programming language a "real" programming language?

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#128

Post by Ericson2314 »

swuecho wrote: post #122
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that the concepts of CS are universal, regardless of programming language. So instead of using a programming language that has been designed for real world use (carved with the footprints of a thousand language hackers, full of awkward inconsistencies, warts, and good-enough-for-nows), teach in a teaching language - a programming language that is very regular, with very simple semantics, not necessarily d…

If they are universal, what is wrong by using a reall word language? >"full of awkward inconsistencies, warts, and good-enough-for-nows" can not agree with 'full'. but Is there a teaching language better? I do not think so.

A teaching language doesn't have mounds of legacy code constraining its evolution.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#129

Post by zem »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #5

Honestly imo Python is the best language to start with for learning. It has all the basic constructs of both functional and object oriented programming in plain english without a bunch of syntax to worry about. I personally think it's the most readable language. it's also quite intuitive imo. Lastly, there's a fantastic community and instant help is available for all skill levels but especially beginners on #python o…

i think the pyret syntax is wonderful, personally. it takes a lot of good bits from my two favourite languages, ruby and ocaml, and blends them into a nicely coherent whole. there are a few minor things i'd probably have done differently, but on the whole i find pyret code very pleasant to read.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#130

Post by petre »

dom0 wrote: post #114
jswrenn wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Languages such as C, Java, Python, and Rust are usually designed by experienced programmers in industry, for experienced programmers in industry. Pyret, on the other hand, is designed by computer science educators, for computer science education. This does not preclude Pyret from being a useful language for general-purpose programming; it just means that language design decisions are driven foremost by pedagogy. For…

> Languages such as C, Java, Python, and Rust are usually designed by experienced programmers in industry, for experienced programmers in industry. Pyret, on the other hand, is designed by computer science educators, for computer science education. Honestly, looking at the examples on the Pyret main page makes me think that this isn't a good approach at all. I have been in software engineering for many years now and…

Yup, I second that. Lua is much more simpler by comparison. Python is pretty easy as well. You can do lots of stuff with those two alone, not only on desktop/mobile platforms but on embedded devices as well (think eLua, Arduino, Pinguino).
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