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Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

amber-lang.com

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Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#61

Post by mort96 »

michaelmior wrote: post #60

> 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.

It's a common practice in Rust at least, where instead of having a mutable variable which you modify across several lines, you declare a new immutable variable with the same name on those lines. I like it, but I guess it really just comes down to preference and what you're used to.

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#65

Post by fforflo »

v3ss0n wrote: post #63

Why would someone need to compile to bash.. how about just use python instead

I had done a SQL-like ->Bash "language," and the reason was that I wanted to have access to CLI tools as-is, in my case, curl programs. Had I chosen Python as a target, I'd have to use requests/urllib, which would be much more verbose.

The same applies if one needs awk, sed, etc... The constructs are just there.

Also the fact that you can just pipe to bash, makes development much easier.

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#66

Post by fforflo »

I don't share the "oh my, why bash, why not English then?" sentiment in the comments.

I've done a bunch of DSLs (CLI with some elaborate syntax really) that compile to bash as a target. It just works for me. Bash is always available; the constructs you can use are there (coreutils are mostly enough for the primitives and xargs for parallelization) It has been great so far for basic cases. Where things get complex (as other's have said) is handling failures, errors and intrinsic cases. That's when you're reminded why people didn't stuck with bash in the first place and we got other scripting languages.

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#67

Post by reisub_black »

Why does the documentation need WebGL?

I have WebGL disabled in my main browser for privacy reasons (super-easy to fingerprint), and I only get to see 'Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).' with an error about ThreeJS initialization in the console.

I assume it's for the fancy animation, and I find that ridiculous. Loading a whole 3D library just to show a fancy animation. This could have been done much simpler by using an animated image format, though admittedly with less functionality - but is it even needed?

I fear the whole industry suffers from overengineering and this is just a symptom.

Even if you're convinced you need the fancy animation, why not gracefully fallback to not showing it and still make the docs usable?

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#69

Post by wg0 »

xnickb wrote: post #55
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 an…

Have learned a bit of bash but that's what has kept me going on always. There's no point in learning million little inconsistencies all of which aren't even documented anywhere like a MDN or MSDN if you will.

Re: Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash

#70

Post by pmontra »

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…

It's not a big deal by I second that. I also thought, "let's see how they are making money out of this". I clicked on the github link and found out it's GPL 3.0, all of it, no open core or similar stuff.

Maybe a tiny note about it being open source could help.

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