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

The Red Programming Language

red-lang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 135 posts

Re: The Red Programming Language

#31

Post by 90s_dev »

vidarh wrote: post #27
taylorallred wrote: post #24

Languages that encourage making DSLs are a two-edged sword. On the one hand, you get to make a language that is more clear and fine-tuned to your use-case. On the other, you have an ad-hoc language with no support that you have to maintain along with the documentation (considering that you can't expect anyone else to know the DSL ahead of time). As I've gotten older, I've determined that well-designed APIs in a well-…

An API is just as much a DSL.

No, an API uses existing rules, but a DSL uses its own ad hoc rules.

GP is right. Don't make DSLs, make APIs, which are:

* More composable

* More reusable

* More simple to reason about

* More natively supported

* More portable

* More readable

* More maintainable

Re: The Red Programming Language

#32

Post by LkpPo »

troupo wrote: post #13
7thaccount wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I was regularly following it until they started talking about an ICO and began focusing too much on making a dialect for block chain stuff. The idea between having the red system language, regular scripting language, cross platform gui, and native executables was really cool though. I remember being interested back in ~2015, so my question is...what's going on as it's been a decade. I know the project is crazy…

IIRC think their original roadmap had 1.0 around 2020. And that was going to include everything, including async written from scratch in a language where nothing was made for async. Then the roadmap slipped, and then never mentioned again. But I haven't looked at the language or discussions around it for a long while now. Edit: found some old discussion here. In 2018 they were at version 0.6.4 https://news.ycombinato…

For me, it even went off the rails before, when Nenad went to China because he was able to raise funds for the project. But he hadn't anticipated that he would be in charge and not the other way around. The situation seems to suit him perfectly. I don't think Red has any future at this point. In any case, the roadmap has always been stratospheric.

Re: The Red Programming Language

#33

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bunderbunder wrote: post #30
vidarh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An API is just as much a DSL.

Kind of, except that a non-DSL API doesn't create any new syntax. Which means that you get to keep all sorts of quality-of-life tools like syntax highlighting and correctness checking in the editor, autoformatting, possibly some amount of linting, etc. A few years ago I revisited Racket after a long hiatus, and that was maybe the biggest thing I noticed. I really don't like syntax macros as much as I did back in the…

Even without the new spiffs, I still don't see the point of DSLs. From where I sit, I see exactly zero problems where I think that new syntax is what I need to be able to write a solution.

Re: The Red Programming Language

#34

Post by LkpPo »

bsrkf wrote: post #23

When I look at a programming language site, especially for a "new" language, I want a quick way to navigate to a reasonably sized decent code sample, ideally documented, showing off significant language features, idiomatic syntax and usage patterns etc... Sites which do this well (just from the top of my head): https://odin-lang.org/ immediate code sample visible "See the Full Demo" "See More Examples" https://ziglan…

You can watch https://www.red-by-example.org/

But no one has bothered to write a complete manual like Carl did for Rebol, and the language is a partial implementation in Rebol which has a hybrid Rebol/Red syntax that must ultimately be bootstrapped in Red. In short, you have the scaffolding around it and if you are not a total fan or a dev of the project it is not even worth it.

Re: The Red Programming Language

#35

Post by ljlolel »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #33
bunderbunder wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of, except that a non-DSL API doesn't create any new syntax. Which means that you get to keep all sorts of quality-of-life tools like syntax highlighting and correctness checking in the editor, autoformatting, possibly some amount of linting, etc. A few years ago I revisited Racket after a long hiatus, and that was maybe the biggest thing I noticed. I really don't like syntax macros as much as I did back in the…

Even without the new spiffs, I still don't see the point of DSLs. From where I sit, I see exactly zero problems where I think that new syntax is what I need to be able to write a solution.

Regex

Re: The Red Programming Language

#36

Post by em-bee »

LkpPo wrote: post #32
troupo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC think their original roadmap had 1.0 around 2020. And that was going to include everything, including async written from scratch in a language where nothing was made for async. Then the roadmap slipped, and then never mentioned again. But I haven't looked at the language or discussions around it for a long while now. Edit: found some old discussion here. In 2018 they were at version 0.6.4 https://news.ycombinato…

For me, it even went off the rails before, when Nenad went to China because he was able to raise funds for the project. But he hadn't anticipated that he would be in charge and not the other way around. The situation seems to suit him perfectly. I don't think Red has any future at this point. In any case, the roadmap has always been stratospheric.

can you elaborate what you mean by not anticipating that he would be in charge?

btw, i met him in beijing while he was there.

Re: The Red Programming Language

#37

Post by tuveson »

90s_dev wrote: post #31
vidarh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An API is just as much a DSL.

No, an API uses existing rules, but a DSL uses its own ad hoc rules. GP is right. Don't make DSLs, make APIs, which are: * More composable * More reusable * More simple to reason about * More natively supported * More portable * More readable * More maintainable

There are plenty of places where it makes more sense to use DSLs (or where they’re flat-out required). SQL and regex both spring to mind. Pretty much any HTML templating language is simpler to use than concatenation a bunch of strings together. JSX is usually easier read than directly calling React functions directly. A line of a shell script can be much nicer (and more portable) than 20 lines of a more general purpose language.

Those are things that spring to mind that I think are unequivocally DSLs, but if you’re willing to consider markup languages as DSLs, the list could get a lot longer.

Re: The Red Programming Language

#38

Post by burnt-resistor »

38 wrote: post #20

red was terrible in 2018, and its terrible now - just tried to compile hello world and it takes 36 seconds https://github.com/red/red/issues/5615

Go compiles massive codebases in that time. V can recompile itself probably 2-3x in that time.

I don't take any new language seriously unless it's memory safe, free of UB, able to interoperate with what already exists including optional shared libraries (because static linking the world every time in everything is memory and disk wasteful), and assists formal proofs of correctness. Otherwise, what already exists seems preferable for serious use and hobbies can remain fun distractions.

Re: The Red Programming Language

#39

Post by 90s_dev »

tuveson wrote: post #37
90s_dev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, an API uses existing rules, but a DSL uses its own ad hoc rules. GP is right. Don't make DSLs, make APIs, which are: * More composable * More reusable * More simple to reason about * More natively supported * More portable * More readable * More maintainable

There are plenty of places where it makes more sense to use DSLs (or where they’re flat-out required). SQL and regex both spring to mind. Pretty much any HTML templating language is simpler to use than concatenation a bunch of strings together. JSX is usually easier read than directly calling React functions directly. A line of a shell script can be much nicer (and more portable) than 20 lines of a more general purpo…

Most people think of DSLs as a language you can create within a language. All the things you named are either entire languages themselves like HTML, SQL, and the shell family, or formal extensions of existing languages like JSX. A DSL would be something you could create inside JS tagged literals or Ruby.

Re: The Red Programming Language

#40

Post by Izkata »

kstrauser wrote: post #2

This is a successor to REBOL[0], designed by Carl Sassenrath[1] who designed the Amiga kernel. I've looked it a few times over the years. It's neat. I've never written a single line of it, though. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebol [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sassenrath

I don't remember how I found it, but REBOL was one of the first programming languages I learned around 25 years ago. Most of my personal projects are still written in it.

I have yet to try converting anything to Red.

Post reply on HN