The Elena Programming Language • Hacker News Board

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#51

Post by a1369209993 » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

kungato wrote: post #31

adhoc32 wrote: post #29

"A variable name can contain any UTF-8 symbols (except special ones, white-spaces; the leading character cannot be a digit) and is case-sensitive." This is terrible.

How is this terrible? Isn't this pretty standard in all big languages?

It is decidedly undesireable for "⋄˄∕≡·‒⁇⁆․⌉⌋"[1] to be a valid indentifier. Especially if, as appears to be the case, "foo[⋄˄/≡·-⁇].⌉⌋"[0] is a valid expression.

0: foo[diamond_caret / indentical_middot - questionquestion ] . ceil_floor

1: utf8: E2 8B 84 CB 84 E2 88 95 E2 89 A1 CE 87 E2 80 92 E2 81 87 E2 81 86 E2 80 A4 E2 8C 89 E2 8C 8B

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#52

Post by throwaway4747l » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

Volt wrote: post #50

throwaway4747l wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to be this harsh. We should always celebrate people making things even if they don't benefit us directly, to me that's even the essence of hacking

Sure, making is good and all, but if you want people to care you should put in effort to make them care. Toy programming languages is a very crowded space.

Sorry, how is it a 'crowded space'? Languages aren't startups, they don't have to compete on a market to be viable (unless they're proprietary of course). As long as someone somewhere has an interest in it, it will live on.

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#53

Post by mastrsushi » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

throwaway4747l wrote: post #52

Volt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, making is good and all, but if you want people to care you should put in effort to make them care. Toy programming languages is a very crowded space.

Sorry, how is it a 'crowded space'? Languages aren't startups, they don't have to compete on a market to be viable (unless they're proprietary of course). As long as someone somewhere has an interest in it, it will live on.

A language needs an active community of many users. In these days, without support for libraries that make software exciting and useful a language can definitely die as a platform. Those are some of the many qualities that persuade users to invest time into learning a new language. Otherwise, they'll go with something already established.

So I disagree, there is definitely competition amongst programming languages.

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#54

Post by throwaway4747l » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

mastrsushi wrote: post #53

throwaway4747l wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, how is it a 'crowded space'? Languages aren't startups, they don't have to compete on a market to be viable (unless they're proprietary of course). As long as someone somewhere has an interest in it, it will live on.

A language needs an active community of many users. In these days, without support for libraries that make software exciting and useful a language can definitely die as a platform. Those are some of the many qualities that persuade users to invest time into learning a new language. Otherwise, they'll go with something already established. So I disagree, there is definitely competition amongst programming languages.

That is not dead which may eternal lie, and in strange aeons even death may die. Remember that weird language that looked like Java and was used by nobody except script kiddies until the Web exploded? Or that quirky little language with forced indentation that was overshadowed by Perl and Matlab well into the 90s and the 00s? Open source projects don't have the same constraints as commercial ones, they can remain dormant or unnoticed for years before suddenly taking off.

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#55

Post by arakov » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #3

Front page doesn't say whether it has obligate GC, which nowadays I guess means yes.

I can't imagine a modern language without GC. So yes, it has. Destructors are not yet implemented,though I do plan them.

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#56

Post by arakov » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

The_rationalist wrote: post #24

New languages would better be written on the JVM or at least on the coreclr, otherwise they loose all hopes of seamless interoperability with existing production ready ecosystems and therefore loose most hope of success.

But it is much more fun to design VM yourself. I could not resist

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#57

Post by arakov » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

amitport wrote: post #10

Can anyone describe a use-case for "first class messages"?

A first class message is similar to the function to invoke this message. So it is just a special case of first class function. I uses first class messages to implement a dynamic record - http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Dynamic_variable_names#Elena

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#58

Post by dang » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

mastrsushi wrote: post #8

jimbob45 wrote: post #4

Is there anyone that doesn’t immediately scroll past the elevator pitch to the code examples when looking at a new language?

Absolutely, No one here thinks you're Steve Jobs. Just show me your little toy pet project example code to convince me it's slightly less useless than the 10 other ones that get posted here everyday.

Be kind.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines at a high rate with your recent comments. Could please review them and take the spirit of this site more to heart? We're trying to have a community here that doesn't degenerate to internet default (or worse), and that takes a collective effort.

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#59

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

arakov wrote: post #57

amitport wrote: post #10

Can anyone describe a use-case for "first class messages"?

A first class message is similar to the function to invoke this message. So it is just a special case of first class function. I uses first class messages to implement a dynamic record - http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Dynamic_variable_names#Elena

[deleted]

Re: The Elena Programming Language

#60

Post by ncmncm » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

arakov wrote: post #55

ncmncm wrote: post #3

Front page doesn't say whether it has obligate GC, which nowadays I guess means yes.

I can't imagine a modern language without GC. So yes, it has. Destructors are not yet implemented,though I do plan them.

I can. Do you consider Rust not modern?

Destructors are usually hard to support cleanly in the presence of obligate GC. Given destructors, GC turns out to be unnecessary. Lacking destructors, managing non-memory resources becomes foolishly difficult, particularly across library boundaries.