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Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

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Re: Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

#11

Post by zelphirkalt »

NeutralForest wrote: post #2

It's such an amazing project, I wish it used something other than Guile but you can't have everything.

Guile has lots of libraries though, and is the language of Guix. This makes it more likely for people to package their stuff via Guix. Guix itself enriches the ecosystem, and Guile projects can use Guix to make them reproducible.

A few problems remain though. A good debugger, a good macro expander (geiser in Emacs is able to expand somehow), and solving the issues with R6RS library syntax and standard library bindings, are what comes to mind.

Racket's multi-core abilities for a long time were mostly heavy weight (places, starting whole new Racket VMs), except for their implementation of futures, but that one was not always useful. I think recently the situation in Racket has improved, but I don't know, whether it is as good as Guile fibers and futures (which are different from futures in Racket).

Re: Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

#12

Post by NeutralForest »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #11
NeutralForest wrote: post #2

It's such an amazing project, I wish it used something other than Guile but you can't have everything.

Guile has lots of libraries though, and is the language of Guix. This makes it more likely for people to package their stuff via Guix. Guix itself enriches the ecosystem, and Guile projects can use Guix to make them reproducible. A few problems remain though. A good debugger, a good macro expander (geiser in Emacs is able to expand somehow), and solving the issues with R6RS library syntax and standard library binding…

Aside from the debugging & testing I already mentioned, going only through guix is a tough sell considering the very tiny amount of people that use it. It's also incredibly slow and doesn't have many packages available. Even for Emacs, it has this weird way of going around Emacs-installed packages (GNU or MELPA channels). Just like Guile docs, it also doesn't tell you of a good way to do things, it only says "here is what exists" with too little guidance imo. It means people have to figure out how to setup things properly on top of all the rest. It makes for a terrible onboarding.

Re: Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

#13

Post by nerdponx »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #11
NeutralForest wrote: post #2

It's such an amazing project, I wish it used something other than Guile but you can't have everything.

Guile has lots of libraries though, and is the language of Guix. This makes it more likely for people to package their stuff via Guix. Guix itself enriches the ecosystem, and Guile projects can use Guix to make them reproducible. A few problems remain though. A good debugger, a good macro expander (geiser in Emacs is able to expand somehow), and solving the issues with R6RS library syntax and standard library binding…

If Guile had more of the "batteries" from the Gauche standard library it might be the perfect all-purpose Scheme. But for just writing a simple application quickly and easily it's been impossible to beat Gauche for me, it's on par with Python and Ruby in that regard IMO.

Re: Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

#14

Post by sheepscreek »

I love this so much! It got me thinking about the future we’re heading towards, that took me down a rabbit hole.

As agents become the dominant code writers, the top concerns for a “working class” programming language would become reducing errors and improving clarity. I think that will lead to languages becoming more explicit and less fun for humans to write, but great for producing code that has a clear intent and can be easily modified without breaking. Rust in its rawest form with lifetimes and the rigmarole will IMO top the charts.

The big question that I still ponder over: will languages like Hoot have a place in the professional world? Or will they be relegated to hobbyists, who still hand-type code for the love of the craft. It could be the difference between having a kitchen gardening hobby vs modern farming…

Re: Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

#16

Post by billythethird »

sheepscreek wrote: post #14

I love this so much! It got me thinking about the future we’re heading towards, that took me down a rabbit hole. As agents become the dominant code writers, the top concerns for a “working class” programming language would become reducing errors and improving clarity. I think that will lead to languages becoming more explicit and less fun for humans to write, but great for producing code that has a clear intent and c…

I have been wondering what an AI first programming language might look like and my closest guess is something like Scheme/Lisp. Maybe they get more popular in the long run.

Re: Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

#17

Post by terminalbraid »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #11
NeutralForest wrote: post #2

It's such an amazing project, I wish it used something other than Guile but you can't have everything.

Guile has lots of libraries though, and is the language of Guix. This makes it more likely for people to package their stuff via Guix. Guix itself enriches the ecosystem, and Guile projects can use Guix to make them reproducible. A few problems remain though. A good debugger, a good macro expander (geiser in Emacs is able to expand somehow), and solving the issues with R6RS library syntax and standard library binding…

> Guix itself enriches the ecosystem

Except that ecosystem Guix provides is not on Windows nor MacOS, making a serious limitation to anyone who wants to develop guile on those platforms.

I support GNU's mission in general, but I find it ironic that when they push freedom of choice you're forced to make the "right" choice or you're left twisting in the wind.

Re: Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

#18

Post by spankalee »

billythethird wrote: post #16
sheepscreek wrote: post #14

I love this so much! It got me thinking about the future we’re heading towards, that took me down a rabbit hole. As agents become the dominant code writers, the top concerns for a “working class” programming language would become reducing errors and improving clarity. I think that will lead to languages becoming more explicit and less fun for humans to write, but great for producing code that has a clear intent and c…

I have been wondering what an AI first programming language might look like and my closest guess is something like Scheme/Lisp. Maybe they get more popular in the long run.

I'm working on what I hope is an AI-first language now, but I'm taking the opposite approach: something like Swift/DartTypeScript with plenty of high level constructs that compactly describe intent.

I'm focusing on very high-quality feedback from the compiler, and sandboxing via WASM to be able to safely iterate without human intervention - which Hoot has as well.

Re: Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

#19

Post by xkriva11 »

billythethird wrote: post #16
sheepscreek wrote: post #14

I love this so much! It got me thinking about the future we’re heading towards, that took me down a rabbit hole. As agents become the dominant code writers, the top concerns for a “working class” programming language would become reducing errors and improving clarity. I think that will lead to languages becoming more explicit and less fun for humans to write, but great for producing code that has a clear intent and c…

I have been wondering what an AI first programming language might look like and my closest guess is something like Scheme/Lisp. Maybe they get more popular in the long run.

Smalltalk offers several excellent features for LLM agents:

- Very small methods that function as standalone compilation units, enabling extremely fast compilation.

- Built-in, fast, and effective code browsing capabilities (e.g., listing senders, implementors, and instance variable users...). This makes it easy for the agent to extract only the required context from the system.

- Powerful runtime reflectivity and easily accessible debugging capabilities.

- A simple grammar with a more natural, language-like feel compared to Lisp.

- Natural sandboxing

Re: Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

#20

Post by davidelettieri »

feastingonslop wrote: post #5
noosphr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guiles debugging has been a nightmare in the 3.x series. Which is rather surprising since it was probably the easiest scheme to debug in the 1.x days. It got so bad I moved to racket as my daily driver.

Which LLM works best for Racket?

I found gemini 3 pro to be pretty good.

Overall understanding of the code, code generation capabilities and ability to explain are all pretty good.

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