Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Fennel?

fennel-lang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 174 posts

Re: Why Fennel?

#51

Post by mgdev »

n4ture wrote: post #45
torginus wrote: post #43

I do not understand the appeal of LISPy languages. I get that the parser is simple and elegant, but I believe the developer (of the compiler in this case) should serve the convenience of the user, not the other way around. Writing code like this is cumbersome and unnecessarily symbol heavy, and reading it isn't really nice as well. I'd rather have the language add that extra complexity into the parser than have me st…

I do not understand the appeal of non-LISPy languages. I get that most people are used to reading it and that they are efficent, but I believe the developer (of the compiler in this case) should serve the convenience of the user, not the other way around. Writing code like this is combersome and unnecessarily symbol heavy, and reading it isn't really nice as well. I'd rather have the language add those extra parens i…

<3

Re: Why Fennel?

#52

Post by Zambyte »

pdimitar wrote: post #29
hyperbrainer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there was an editor which could act as an interpreter for Lisp directly ...

Wake me up when its authors realize most of us don't want to "hack" our editors. They're still stuck in 1980. We actually have to pay bills and want to spend time with our families and go out in nature. I appreciate customization; that's why I moved to Neovim and not to a full-blown GUI IDE (and I'll never use those). But that editor you speak of practically requires me to fix the idiocies of plugin authors that can'…

I haven't really touched my emacs config in years. I just set it up how I wanted and now I use it to pay my bills. It sounds like the flexibility was just too tempting for you to not hack on it when you should be doing other things.

Re: Why Fennel?

#53

Post by pdimitar »

Zambyte wrote: post #52
pdimitar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wake me up when its authors realize most of us don't want to "hack" our editors. They're still stuck in 1980. We actually have to pay bills and want to spend time with our families and go out in nature. I appreciate customization; that's why I moved to Neovim and not to a full-blown GUI IDE (and I'll never use those). But that editor you speak of practically requires me to fix the idiocies of plugin authors that can'…

I haven't really touched my emacs config in years. I just set it up how I wanted and now I use it to pay my bills. It sounds like the flexibility was just too tempting for you to not hack on it when you should be doing other things.

I have set it up 50 times and it crapped the bed every time.

Before anyone yells "skill issue!", I'll say that if any plugin author can make the editor crap the bed, then the editor is not good.

There are degrees to freedom. Complete freedom in such environments is a liability, not an asset.

Say hi to the others in the ivory tower. And remind them not to do selective omissions in their supposed counter-arguments to "win" an argument, and that it's a cheap tactic.

Re: Why Fennel?

#54

Post by tonymillion »

AlienRobot wrote: post #37
lelanthran wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really want to try making a language that is imperative, like really imperative, where every line must start with a verb, just to see what it would look like. It would look like Tcl.

A bit but I don't like "set foo 32" One way I think I can get rid of that is like this 32 = foo; But why do we even need variables? I think the perfect language design would be if you could just do this: pow(x, 2); pow(y, 2); sqrt() = result; And maybe you could do this { pow(x, 2); pow(y, 2); sqrt(); } + 1; pow(2) = result; Instead of result = pow(sqrt(pow(x, 2), pow(y, 2)) + 1, 2); that we have today.

At that point you’re almost, but not quite into the realm of “forth”

Re: Why Fennel?

#55

Post by WhatIsDukkha »

pdimitar wrote: post #53
Zambyte wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't really touched my emacs config in years. I just set it up how I wanted and now I use it to pay my bills. It sounds like the flexibility was just too tempting for you to not hack on it when you should be doing other things.

I have set it up 50 times and it crapped the bed every time. Before anyone yells "skill issue!", I'll say that if any plugin author can make the editor crap the bed, then the editor is not good. There are degrees to freedom. Complete freedom in such environments is a liability, not an asset. Say hi to the others in the ivory tower. And remind them not to do selective omissions in their supposed counter-arguments to "…

I have about 140 Emacs plugins running.

I've never had to declare Emacs bankruptcy.

10 years of good times with Emacs+evil and 35 years of vim.

Fwiw.

Re: Why Fennel?

#56

Post by NewsaHackO »

n4ture wrote: post #45
torginus wrote: post #43

I do not understand the appeal of LISPy languages. I get that the parser is simple and elegant, but I believe the developer (of the compiler in this case) should serve the convenience of the user, not the other way around. Writing code like this is cumbersome and unnecessarily symbol heavy, and reading it isn't really nice as well. I'd rather have the language add that extra complexity into the parser than have me st…

I do not understand the appeal of non-LISPy languages. I get that most people are used to reading it and that they are efficent, but I believe the developer (of the compiler in this case) should serve the convenience of the user, not the other way around. Writing code like this is combersome and unnecessarily symbol heavy, and reading it isn't really nice as well. I'd rather have the language add those extra parens i…

This doesn't really resonate with people though, as most people are more familiar with C-style notation. Also:

>Writing code like this is combersome and unnecessarily symbol heavy

Does not make sense in this context, as it mainly applies to Lisp-like languages that uses parentheses heavily.

Re: Why Fennel?

#57

Post by pdimitar »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #55
pdimitar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have set it up 50 times and it crapped the bed every time. Before anyone yells "skill issue!", I'll say that if any plugin author can make the editor crap the bed, then the editor is not good. There are degrees to freedom. Complete freedom in such environments is a liability, not an asset. Say hi to the others in the ivory tower. And remind them not to do selective omissions in their supposed counter-arguments to "…

I have about 140 Emacs plugins running. I've never had to declare Emacs bankruptcy. 10 years of good times with Emacs+evil and 35 years of vim. Fwiw.

Sadly that's not worth anything. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anecdotal evidence in both directions.

I had a soft spot for Emacs for a _long_ time (almost two decades)... FWIW. ;)

Key word: had.

Re: Why Fennel?

#58

Post by HexDecOctBin »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #42
benwilber0 wrote: post #10

I love seeing new languages targeting the Lua runtime. I've been adding Lua scripting support to pretty much everything I make now. I recently made my SSE server programmable with Lua and it's extended the functionality far beyond what I would have had the patience and time to do myself. Highly recommend Lua with mlua-rs Rust bindings. [0] https://tinysse.com [1] https://github.com/benwilber/tinysse [2] https://githu…

I would love to see a stripped back ML-style language that targets lua, just something like ocaml's type system and exhaustive pattern match right on top would be all I need. There have been a few attempts but nothing I know of that got usably far and is maintained. There might be a way to get standard ML to output lua or something but I'm not that familiar with it. I think it would be an incredible fit for a third b…

You might be able to repurpose CSharp.lua[1] to compile F#

[1] https://github.com/yanghuan/CSharp.lua

Re: Why Fennel?

#59

Post by 7qW24A »

pdimitar wrote: post #53
Zambyte wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't really touched my emacs config in years. I just set it up how I wanted and now I use it to pay my bills. It sounds like the flexibility was just too tempting for you to not hack on it when you should be doing other things.

I have set it up 50 times and it crapped the bed every time. Before anyone yells "skill issue!", I'll say that if any plugin author can make the editor crap the bed, then the editor is not good. There are degrees to freedom. Complete freedom in such environments is a liability, not an asset. Say hi to the others in the ivory tower. And remind them not to do selective omissions in their supposed counter-arguments to "…

This is a pretty weird hill to die on, boss. Are you suggesting that all of the software written over the years by emacs users (eg gcc) is “ivory tower”?

As a community of practitioners we should embrace the idea that not all tools have to be “ideal” for all users. Some people like hacking their editor, and some don’t. If software tools sink to the lowest common denominator, like the vast majority of commercial software, we’ll all be worse for it.

Re: Why Fennel?

#60

Post by kras143 »

I believe that people who complain about parens have not coded in Lisp (atleast not enough)! Once you get over the "parens", the homogeneity of the language shines through and you will appreciate why some people like me never get over Lisp.
Post reply on HN