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Felix - a fast scripting language

felix-lang.org

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Re: Felix - a fast scripting language

#11

Post by Toshio »

Yttrill wrote: post #9
Toshio wrote: post #7

Love at first sight, but the build script is broken. http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=WzB5Jqyf

It works with this: ~/felix>python3 Python 3.2.3 (v3.2.3:3d0686d90f55, Apr 10 2012, 11:25:50) [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin and also on Linux with this: skaller@felix:~$ python3 Python 3.2.3 (default, Oct 19 2012, 20:10:41) [GCC 4.6.3] on linux2 I have been told that the script fails if you use a slightly different version of Python: File "/usr/lib/python3.3/subprocess.py", line 906, in commun…

Indeed, I tried it on a fully up-to-date installation of ArchLinux.

Re: Felix - a fast scripting language

#12

Post by mrcharles »

I'll stick with Lua. I wouldn't give up the dynamic aspects of a language like Lua just for a bit more speed. LuaJIT is more than enough, and if you are doing the hard number crunching that makes speed an issue there's a good chance it's not trivially harder just to write it in C++ to begin with.

Re: Felix - a fast scripting language

#13

Post by jheriko »

See fridgescript (http://code.google.com/p/fridgescript/) - because you are going through C/C++ it is faster in its domain (x87 floating point work) if given good clean code. Its not big or clever - just that C/C++ kills its performance a little with restrictions like struct layout rules and standard library math functions being rubbish... (note the compiler uses almost no optimisation strategies and the language is very specific and almost useless though)

That being said, I like the idea very much, I just object to the claim of fastest and the value the claim implies. Beating C is very easy if you know some very basic things about the restrictions placed on it by standards... :)

Re: Felix - a fast scripting language

#14

Post by PuerkitoBio »

Looks very interesting, well done to whoever did this. After an admittedly quick and superficial glance at the tutorial, I'm not fan of chapter 6 though. Why so many ways to write calls? With no idiomatic syntax, it means I have to know all these variations if I hope to understand Felix code (since it is ok for anyone to choose whichever style).

Re: Felix - a fast scripting language

#15

Post by raphinou »

I've kept an eye on felix-lang the last several months, and the project seems to be progressing continuously.

I'm curious though: has it been used in production? I'd be very interested in reading real use stories, with up and down sides!

Also, how is the community doing, and what about contributors? Do both groups grow?

Re: Felix - a fast scripting language

#16

Post by Yttrill »

Toshio wrote: post #11
Yttrill wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works with this: ~/felix>python3 Python 3.2.3 (v3.2.3:3d0686d90f55, Apr 10 2012, 11:25:50) [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin and also on Linux with this: skaller@felix:~$ python3 Python 3.2.3 (default, Oct 19 2012, 20:10:41) [GCC 4.6.3] on linux2 I have been told that the script fails if you use a slightly different version of Python: File "/usr/lib/python3.3/subprocess.py", line 906, in commun…

Indeed, I tried it on a fully up-to-date installation of ArchLinux.

I am sorry about this problem. I have had a look and I understand what is happening but not how to fix it. Python 3.2 does not provide a timeout in the subprocess module. fbuild is using a module by Peter Astrand which derived a new class and adds a timeout. Unfortunately Python 3.3 adds the exact same argument to the API, but defaults it no None, which is clobbering the value used in the derived class somehow, leading to timeout of None being added to a floating point value.

Re: Felix - a fast scripting language

#18

Post by haberman »

The web page rubs me the wrong way. How can you claim to be the fastest anything without a single benchmark? How can you claim to be a "scripting language" when you're statically-typed and compile to C++? What does "scripting language" even mean then? How can you say things like "it will be a bit slow the first time but subsequent runs will load much faster than any VM." Any VM? Are you really "much faster" than:

  $ time lua empty.lua 

  real	0m0.005s
  user	0m0.002s
  sys	0m0.002s

  $ time ./luajit empty.lua 

  real	0m0.005s
  user	0m0.001s
  sys	0m0.002s
Maybe there's cool stuff going on here but I can't get past being annoyed at these over-hyped claims.

Re: Felix - a fast scripting language

#19

Post by d0m »

At first glance, it seems fairly complex. For instance, 4 different kinds of variables, 3 different kinds of function. But I guess that's understandable if it compiles to C++ and is looking to be highly efficient.
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