Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation • Hacker News Board

Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#1

Post by greydius » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 8:45 PM UTC

Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation
ferret-lang.org

Re: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#2

Post by gleenn » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 12:13 AM UTC

Seems like a cool project if you already know Clojure and hate the start up time, but also seems like it sidesteps one of the main benefits of Clojure which is Java interop obviously... Which Clojure has to do a fair number of handsprings to accomplish. Begs the question, why pick Clojure as the lisp to compile to C++? Why not Racket or Common Lisp etc?

Re: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#3

Post by christophilus » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 12:21 AM UTC

Discovering this and [Clojerl](https://github.com/jfacorro/clojerl) within a week of each other is like Christmas come early.

Re: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#4

Post by kbuchanan » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 12:22 AM UTC

Can anybody tell whether it supports multimethods and protocols?

Re: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#5

Post by christophilus » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 12:22 AM UTC

gleenn wrote: post #2

Seems like a cool project if you already know Clojure and hate the start up time, but also seems like it sidesteps one of the main benefits of Clojure which is Java interop obviously... Which Clojure has to do a fair number of handsprings to accomplish. Begs the question, why pick Clojure as the lisp to compile to C++? Why not Racket or Common Lisp etc?

I like Clojure for its encouragement of functional, immutable-first programming. That, and I find its syntax for function parameters, data-structure literals, etc to be preferable.

Re: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#6

Post by comex » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 12:23 AM UTC

Viewing the site in iOS Safari, I get several pages of what appears to be random binary gunk rendered as HTML. Something wrong with compression headers?

Re: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#7

Post by nathell » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 12:27 AM UTC

It's very notable in that it's literate Clojure.

https://github.com/nakkaya/ferret/blob/0.2.8/ferret.org

Re: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#8

Post by ohyes » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 12:32 AM UTC

gleenn wrote: post #2

Seems like a cool project if you already know Clojure and hate the start up time, but also seems like it sidesteps one of the main benefits of Clojure which is Java interop obviously... Which Clojure has to do a fair number of handsprings to accomplish. Begs the question, why pick Clojure as the lisp to compile to C++? Why not Racket or Common Lisp etc?

I think clojure has very well designed concurrency and data structures. If this compiles to c++ presumably one could leverage the c++ universe.

Re: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#9

Post by davidgrenier » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 12:37 AM UTC

Always look at the memory management story when you stumble upon something like this.

Re: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

#10

Post by nerdponx » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 12:45 AM UTC

gleenn wrote: post #2

Seems like a cool project if you already know Clojure and hate the start up time, but also seems like it sidesteps one of the main benefits of Clojure which is Java interop obviously... Which Clojure has to do a fair number of handsprings to accomplish. Begs the question, why pick Clojure as the lisp to compile to C++? Why not Racket or Common Lisp etc?

Why not? It's great to have another Lisp for me to try out. I was avoiding learning Clojure specifically because of the JVM dependency.