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Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

amber-lang.com

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Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#51

Post by 1oooqooq »

omoikane wrote: post #26

Assuming that these are typical outputs from Amber: https://github.com/Ph0enixKM/Amber/blob/master/setup/install... https://github.com/Ph0enixKM/Amber/blob/master/setup/uninsta... The inconsistent indents and decorated variable names made them less readable than hand-written Bash scripts. I understand that most compiler outputs are not meant to be human readable, but generally we would get minification and/or obfusca…

i think they do this since there's no source map or symbol mapping support on the debugger (which is just bash errors lol)

would be nice if it was the source and script at the same time. as in a comment at the bottom or top is the source or something.

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#52

Post by forgotpwd16 »

zxexz wrote: post #38
orthecreedence wrote: post #15

Quick note to the creators: the website looks almost exactly like every other "here try this cool command-line utility so we can hook you and start charging a service fee for it" startup website and I instantly distrusted it. The design communicates that you're selling a product , not providing an open-source utility. That said, very interesting syntax. I agree with others about the $...$ being kind of odd, but other…

I was more put off more by the initial example. Amber being used to calculate an age being less than 18. With sed. Seems almost like an attempt at humor, except the bit where one would laugh.

This is the compiled to Bash part. Sed is used because `bc -l` can return a float when integer is expected. Not sure if can be done better in generic case but it isn't unheard. Certainly can be optimized for some cases. (Here e.g. can use Bash's built-in integer arithmetic.)

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#53

Post by inbetween »

liampulles wrote: post #43

What I really want for scripting usecases is a language that has modern language concepts (easy to use arrays and maps, text formatting strings, etc) but that allows me to call commands as easily as I could call functions. Maybe there are existing scripting langs that make this so? Ambers approach is not bad but I feel it could be even better.

Marcel the shell is surprisingly effective for that. It is python with seamless calling of external commands and piping:

    ls /home/jao | map (lambda f: (f, f.size))
https://github.com/geophile/marcel

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#55

Post by xnickb »

carlinigraphy wrote: post #40

To my eye, this does not look good. I consider myself to be quite proficient in bash. I write a lot of bash professionally. I've written a compiler (transpiler?) for a strongly typed configuration language that outputs bash. There are three main problems I see here. (1) Pipelines, subshells, and external dependencies. The example on the website compiles a conditional `if age if [ $(echo ${__0_age} ' Pipelines and sub…

> Just learn bash.

There are many reasons why it is to be avoided. For me the deal breaker was that one time I spent 2h debugging a script only to find out there was an extra space character that made the whole thing break silently.

I would be willing to learn a sane language, but bash isn't one. If you need to know of a million tiny gotchas to implement even the simplest task safely and portably, then there isn't any reason to _learn_ bash.

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#56

Post by forgotpwd16 »

carlinigraphy wrote: post #40

To my eye, this does not look good. I consider myself to be quite proficient in bash. I write a lot of bash professionally. I've written a compiler (transpiler?) for a strongly typed configuration language that outputs bash. There are three main problems I see here. (1) Pipelines, subshells, and external dependencies. The example on the website compiles a conditional `if age if [ $(echo ${__0_age} ' Pipelines and sub…

>having types in your language

Per docs[0], seems types are rudimentary. For numerics there's only one type for any number. Good remark regarding GNU vs others. This isn't seem be noted anywhere.

[0]: https://docs.amber-lang.com/basic_syntax/data_types

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#57

Post by kwhitefoot »

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #52
zxexz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was more put off more by the initial example. Amber being used to calculate an age being less than 18. With sed. Seems almost like an attempt at humor, except the bit where one would laugh.

This is the compiled to Bash part. Sed is used because `bc -l` can return a float when integer is expected. Not sure if can be done better in generic case but it isn't unheard. Certainly can be optimized for some cases. (Here e.g. can use Bash's built-in integer arithmetic.)

But why does it use bc in the first place? Bash does integer arithmetic perfectly well on its own.

Amber claims to be type safe so it should have enough information to avoid the the use of bc in this case.

Ah, just looked at the documentation. Amber doesn't have integer types just a number type. That means that any numerical operation in Amber is pretty much guaranteed to be very inefficient.

It's a very strange choice to make because the underlying 'machine code' supports both integers and floating point.

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#58

Post by robxorb »

orthecreedence wrote: post #15

Quick note to the creators: the website looks almost exactly like every other "here try this cool command-line utility so we can hook you and start charging a service fee for it" startup website and I instantly distrusted it. The design communicates that you're selling a product , not providing an open-source utility. That said, very interesting syntax. I agree with others about the $...$ being kind of odd, but other…

Somehow I didn't get that impression from the website at all.

I thought it was clear, functional, told me everything I needed to know in the order I needed to know it, and also looked nice - tying into the "amber" branding well.

Maybe I just don't spend enough time on websites that are designed to hook me in and start charging a fee? ;)

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#59

Post by Woeps »

chimen wrote: post #32
orthecreedence wrote: post #15

Quick note to the creators: the website looks almost exactly like every other "here try this cool command-line utility so we can hook you and start charging a service fee for it" startup website and I instantly distrusted it. The design communicates that you're selling a product , not providing an open-source utility. That said, very interesting syntax. I agree with others about the $...$ being kind of odd, but other…

[flagged]

What does this have to do with their comment? The poster was giving feedback about a concern (maybe not a concern but something that they noticed).

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#60

Post by michaelmior »

> Variable declarations can be overshadowed - this means that you can redeclare the existing variable with different data type in given scope if you need to.

I'm having a hard time deciding why I would want this. It seems more likely to result in bugs than being a useful feature.

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