Raku: A language for gremlins • Hacker News Board

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#31

Post by no_wizard » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #26

no_wizard wrote: post #4

Raku is interesting as a language indeed. I can't get over some of the idioms, they just don't map nicely in my head. The same reason AppleScript struck me as weird, it trys to use natural language on one hand (e.g. `my`, `say`, `sub`, `gather`) with some oddities like `@` being used for (assuming?) scoped iterations or declaring modules[0] and some other from-an-outsider byzantine syntax decisions. For instance, I c…

Let me guess, you were never a Perl programmer? Trust me, if you have a Perl background, a lot of that syntax looks pretty familiar (the @ sigil in particular denotes an array).

Yes. Though that's my point, to me it doesn't feel the most welcoming to others who know another language (or languages).

By all means though, if folks like it, carry on. I am sure Raku as a runtime is well engineered, I respect that.

I don't know what lineage Raku shares other than Perl, but it seems to be on its own plane if you will, and thats cool.

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#32

Post by zem » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

pyret has kebab-case and infix subtraction too, but it has an easy time doing so because it made the decision that infix operators have to be surrounded by whitespace. i guess that wouldn't really be in keeping with raku's anything-goes philosophy though.

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#33

Post by anthk » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

flir wrote: post #23

munificent wrote: post #2

One way you might arranging programming languages in a 2D space is with two axes: 1. How much should the language surprise you? 2. When the language does surprise you, should it delight you or horrify you? surprising ^ | | | delight horrify | | | v unsurprising Only a sadist would deliberately design a language for the top right quadrant, but there are many esoteric languages in there. I think most people tacitly ass…

> You check set membership with ∈ Yeah, ok, I see what you mean. >> 0,2,4...10 > (0 2 4 6 8 10) >> 1,2,4...10 > (1 2 4 8) Wait... what ? Is it looking the next number up in OEIS or something?

Damn, that made me laugh.

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#34

Post by afiori » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

hardburn wrote: post #18

gunapologist99 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: "The regex syntax isn't backwards compatible with Perl 5. For thirty years languages followed the PCRE "standard" and Perl 6 just… threw it all away." so it looks like the author has at least passing familiarity.

Which also gives away some gaps in the author's knowledge. Perl wasn't following the PCRE standard. It was the PCRE standard. Everything else was following it. Usually with some piece missing--far more implementations should have the /x modifier. The Perl 6 design process didn't throw it away after 30 years. It threw it away with less than 10 years. There was already widespread knowledge that Perl had gone beyond "re…

> For thirty years languages followed the PCRE "standard"

It says that (most) other languages followed the standard set by Perl 5, not that Perl followed the PCRE standard

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#35

Post by Kwpolska » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #2

One way you might arranging programming languages in a 2D space is with two axes: 1. How much should the language surprise you? 2. When the language does surprise you, should it delight you or horrify you? surprising ^ | | | delight horrify | | | v unsurprising Only a sadist would deliberately design a language for the top right quadrant, but there are many esoteric languages in there. I think most people tacitly ass…

In my view, Raku was venturing further and further into the top-right corner with every subsequent paragraph.

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#36

Post by cogman10 » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #2

One way you might arranging programming languages in a 2D space is with two axes: 1. How much should the language surprise you? 2. When the language does surprise you, should it delight you or horrify you? surprising ^ | | | delight horrify | | | v unsurprising Only a sadist would deliberately design a language for the top right quadrant, but there are many esoteric languages in there. I think most people tacitly ass…

I mean, it was "Perl 6" so is it really surprising that Perl devs wanted a language that looks nothing like any other language?

Perl has it's own healthy share of "delightful surprises" and Raku was mostly designed to eliminate perl's horrifying surprises.

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#37

Post by kragen » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

flir wrote: post #23

munificent wrote: post #2

One way you might arranging programming languages in a 2D space is with two axes: 1. How much should the language surprise you? 2. When the language does surprise you, should it delight you or horrify you? surprising ^ | | | delight horrify | | | v unsurprising Only a sadist would deliberately design a language for the top right quadrant, but there are many esoteric languages in there. I think most people tacitly ass…

> You check set membership with ∈ Yeah, ok, I see what you mean. >> 0,2,4...10 > (0 2 4 6 8 10) >> 1,2,4...10 > (1 2 4 8) Wait... what ? Is it looking the next number up in OEIS or something?

    Unable to deduce arithmetic or geometric sequence from: 1,2,5
    Did you really mean '..'?

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#38

Post by the_af » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 10:00 PM UTC

actionfromafar wrote: post #7

munificent wrote: post #2

One way you might arranging programming languages in a 2D space is with two axes: 1. How much should the language surprise you? 2. When the language does surprise you, should it delight you or horrify you? surprising ^ | | | delight horrify | | | v unsurprising Only a sadist would deliberately design a language for the top right quadrant, but there are many esoteric languages in there. I think most people tacitly ass…

I'm very interested in bottom right langs.

COBOL?

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#39

Post by flir » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 10:02 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #37

flir wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You check set membership with ∈ Yeah, ok, I see what you mean. >> 0,2,4...10 > (0 2 4 6 8 10) >> 1,2,4...10 > (1 2 4 8) Wait... what ? Is it looking the next number up in OEIS or something?

Unable to deduce arithmetic or geometric sequence from: 1,2,5 Did you really mean '..'?

> arithmetic or geometric

See, that doesn't delight me. OEIS is what's needed here.

Re: Raku: A language for gremlins

#40

Post by Joker_vD » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 10:03 PM UTC

I sometimes idly wondered what would a programming language look like if it were filled to the brims with syntactic sugar. Now I know. It has this "it's horrifying but in a weirdly enticing kind of way, I can't make myself look away, show me more, please" kind of feeling.