The Austral Programming Language

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

zetalyrae wrote: post #67

imglorp wrote: post #49

Flashbacks to TA'ing freshman programming 101 in Pascal: every student got hung up on when to use a period or semicolon or end. And from Austral's fib example (snipped) module body Fib is function fib(n: Nat64): Nat64 is if n We here all understand BNF, Ada, Modula, etc and parsing but imagine explaining to the first day student: Why is there no "end function" like for the other contexts? When do I use a semicolon vs…

Declarations don't need `end function` because it's always clear what you're closing. Statements need an `end if`, `end for` etc. because it lets you find your way in nested code. The rationale for the syntax explains it a bit: https://austral-lang.org/spec/spec.html#rationale-syntax FWIW I will probably get rid of the `module is ... end module.` bit because it adds unnecessary nesting.

Post by cpeterso » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 10:20 PM UTC

Yasuraka wrote: post #37

wredue wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because it fundamentally doesn’t actually impact all that much. By most people’s account, the actual coding part of programming isn’t really a majority of their time. Domain research, speccing, debugging, testing, planning, etc. the microscopic savings in key presses are just really such a strange thing to even debate about when you think about it. Major tersness pushes also tend to cause “symbol soup” and, pe…

>the microscopic savings in key presses are just really such a strange thing to even debate It's about readability

Post by hardwaregeek » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 11:11 PM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #42

hardwaregeek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh C is a pretty miserable language to parse. No function definition keyword means you have to get pretty far to realize that you're parsing a function. Pointer syntax is ambiguous with expression grouping. And let's not even get started with the preprocessor. I'd say a good model for simple syntax is Go. Rust has a nice compromise of syntax too, but there are some awkward edge cases.

Shame they never fixed this. Would have been nothing to add a fn keyword at the beginning of all function definitions and then use the MS EEE strategy to bring it into the standard. Of the many changes the committee could make with C, I have to believe a function keyword would be among the least contentious.

Post by saghm » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

mrkeen wrote: post #16

This language looks super promising. With the exceptions of 'no type inference' and 'no arithmetic precedence', I really like its anti-features list. With regard to 'no arithmetic precedence', I tried printLn((1 + 2) + 3); and printLn(1 + 2 + 3); Sure enough, the first one compiles, but the second doesn't. Also, (n-1) is a parse error unless you put a space after the minus. I got curious if recursion was properly han…

Post by meindnoch » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 11:35 PM UTC

adamrezich wrote: post #66

zetalyrae wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is the compiler has a bunch of explicit flags, but the build system (which doesn't exist yet) will have the `foo build`, `foo run` etc. commands and find the files using a package manifest. Essentially like `cargo` vs. `rustc`. I have a little prototype of the build system in Python but haven't pushed it up yet.

what's encouraging you to conceive of the build system and the language as separate things? I never understood why most people making new languages seem to want to have each of these be distinct—why not just define the build using the same language?