Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat • Hacker News Board

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#11

Post by foota » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 9:44 AM UTC

fouc wrote: post #3

TIL that there's a format called wat, which means "WebAssembly text format" and it can be converted to wasm (and back to wat). This format uses S-expressions like lisp, and it's got a stack machine like forth. [1] [2] I'm a bit surprised something so mainstream ended up being a lispy forth. [1] https://ph1lter.bitbucket.io/blog/2020-12-03-webasm-forth-wi... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly/Und…

In case you're not aware, I believe that web assembly is a stack based language.

You may be interested to read this, which talks about a proposal to add additional stack instructions: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1381

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#12

Post by chriszhang » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 10:44 AM UTC

Will you say it is ok for a complete new person to lisp to learn sugar? Example is someone who has never learnt lisp in life?

Or will you recommend learning sugar after learning some other lisp?

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#13

Post by krageon » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:13 AM UTC

galfarragem wrote: post #8

When I read about a new typed Lisp I always hope to see a Lisp with Haskell-like type annotations. Is this easily feasible? That would be real sugar .

lisp can already be typed

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#14

Post by lbotos » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:16 AM UTC

chriszhang wrote: post #12

Will you say it is ok for a complete new person to lisp to learn sugar? Example is someone who has never learnt lisp in life? Or will you recommend learning sugar after learning some other lisp?

Not OP, I've only written a tiny bit of lisp, but this looks pretty similar.

I'd probably suggest SICP: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html if you want a "lisp intro"

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#15

Post by valenterry » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 12:01 PM UTC

I really like the power and flexibility of Lisps, but I am so much more productive with good(!) statical typesystems.

Looking at both typed racket and now sugar, it doesn't look really good to me. I think I would rather decide to go straight for Haskell/Scala/... or Lisp/Clojure. Maybe it's not really possible to combine both in a good way _yet_, or maybe it's not possible in general. I hope for the former.

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#16

Post by timdeve » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 12:23 PM UTC

valenterry wrote: post #15

I really like the power and flexibility of Lisps, but I am so much more productive with good(!) statical typesystems. Looking at both typed racket and now sugar, it doesn't look really good to me. I think I would rather decide to go straight for Haskell/Scala/... or Lisp/Clojure. Maybe it's not really possible to combine both in a good way _yet_, or maybe it's not possible in general. I hope for the former.

You should check out Carp[1]. The language is still young but it might scratch that itch.

[1] https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#17

Post by TurboHaskal » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 12:51 PM UTC

chriszhang wrote: post #12

Will you say it is ok for a complete new person to lisp to learn sugar? Example is someone who has never learnt lisp in life? Or will you recommend learning sugar after learning some other lisp?

If you already know how to program, I'd recommend to just install SBCL and start a project with https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ as a companion.

Forget about the perfect editor setup, idiomatic code and all that fuzz about becoming enlightened. (Common) Lisp is first and foremost a productive, pragmatic language to get things done, so just start hacking.

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#18

Post by Chris2048 » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

Any relations to sweetjs.org - "Hygienic Macros for JavaScript"?

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#19

Post by nobleach » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

lbotos wrote: post #14

chriszhang wrote: post #12

Will you say it is ok for a complete new person to lisp to learn sugar? Example is someone who has never learnt lisp in life? Or will you recommend learning sugar after learning some other lisp?

Not OP, I've only written a tiny bit of lisp, but this looks pretty similar. I'd probably suggest SICP: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html if you want a "lisp intro"

That book can get really dense really quickly. It DOES appeal to certain types of learners though. So since, you can find the HTML version for free, check it out. I personally suggest "The Little Schemer". It literally starts with Atoms and works its way out. It uses Scheme, which Racket is based on. I highly recommend it.

Re: Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat

#20

Post by thealig » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

TurboHaskal wrote: post #17

chriszhang wrote: post #12

Will you say it is ok for a complete new person to lisp to learn sugar? Example is someone who has never learnt lisp in life? Or will you recommend learning sugar after learning some other lisp?

If you already know how to program, I'd recommend to just install SBCL and start a project with https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ as a companion. Forget about the perfect editor setup, idiomatic code and all that fuzz about becoming enlightened. (Common) Lisp is first and foremost a productive, pragmatic language to get things done, so just start hacking.

I am particularly looking to learn a LISP style language. Scheme and Racket caught my interest, given its concise, expressive syntax. Is it advisable to start with Common Lisp first, or go with Scheme/Racket? Thanks for the tip btw.