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Why Janet? (2023)

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Re: Why Janet? (2023)

#2
Pretty compelling, especially "Janet does not adhere to the ancient customs. CAR is called first. PROGN is called do. LAMBDA is fn, and SETQ is def." - a sign of good sense for sure!

How fast is it?

Also my main objection to Lisps is still the horrible bracket syntax. Yes it's unambiguous and easy to parse, but it's HORRIBLE to read and edit. I wish this project had been a success (or something similar to it): https://readable.sourceforge.io/

Also I don't think static typing is really optional for me at this point.

Re: Why Janet? (2023)

#3
This post is refreshing - smells of the pre AI discussions on the internet. A new language, a new syntax, heavy debate with people who have spent years writing code. I think someone should start a community online where AI isnt allowed.

Re: Why Janet? (2023)

#4
> But by allowing you to unquote literal functions, Janet makes it possible to write macros that are completely referentially transparent.

These lisp guys really get excited over very abstract things. If you say this to an average person on the street they will probably try to run away.

Re: Why Janet? (2023)

#6
post #2

Pretty compelling, especially "Janet does not adhere to the ancient customs. CAR is called first. PROGN is called do. LAMBDA is fn, and SETQ is def." - a sign of good sense for sure! How fast is it? Also my main objection to Lisps is still the horrible bracket syntax. Yes it's unambiguous and easy to parse, but it's HORRIBLE to read and edit. I wish this project had been a success (or something similar to it): https:…

> Pretty compelling, especially "Janet does not adhere to the ancient customs. CAR is called first. PROGN is called do. LAMBDA is fn, and SETQ is def." - a sign of good sense for sure!

Just FYI, many of these are also done in Scheme and its derivative Racket. They kept lambda (but even Python did that), but progn -> begin, setq -> set!, car -> first, and so on.

> Also my main objection to Lisps is still the horrible bracket syntax. Yes it's unambiguous and easy to parse, but it's HORRIBLE to read and edit.

I have pretty mixed feelings at this point. I don’t mind it for normal programming, but when I do numerical programming (physics models, etc.) you often get extremely long and verbose expressions that are IMO difficult to parse compared to the math-like infix operator notation used in other languages.

Re: Why Janet? (2023)

#7
The embeddability sounds very appealing. Does anyone have experience with using this somewhere one might traditionally reach for Lua?

Re: Why Janet? (2023)

#8
> Instead of regular expressions, Janet’s text wrangling is based around parsing expression grammars. Parsing expression grammars are simpler, more powerful, and more predictable than regular expressions.

I would dispute that this is the case. In PEGs, alternatives are not commutative, unlike in regular expressions. This can lead to quite frustrating debugging. While a valid choice, the advantage over REs is overstated.

Re: Why Janet? (2023)

#9
post #4

> But by allowing you to unquote literal functions, Janet makes it possible to write macros that are completely referentially transparent. These lisp guys really get excited over very abstract things. If you say this to an average person on the street they will probably try to run away.

you ever try to explain object oriented programming languages and their benefits to the "average person on the street"?
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