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

Functional Go Programming Language

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 36 posts

Re: Functional Go Programming Language

#3

Post by fisher-lebo »

I've toyed with this idea a bit (compiling a more familiar language down to Clojure).

This project in particular gives some of the benefits of Clojure (JVM, expressive language, immutability), but I don't see any easy way to add new constructs to the language like macros without modifying the compiler itself. Can you modify the grammar that is fed to Instaparse at runtime?

That being said, the current branding and name confused me initially. I was expecting a full Go to Clojure compiler, but it appears that this is mainly a language that has similar syntax to Go which compiles to Clojure, which is still very cool, just different.

Re: Functional Go Programming Language

#4

Post by stcredzero »

fisher-lebo wrote: post #3

I've toyed with this idea a bit (compiling a more familiar language down to Clojure). This project in particular gives some of the benefits of Clojure (JVM, expressive language, immutability), but I don't see any easy way to add new constructs to the language like macros without modifying the compiler itself. Can you modify the grammar that is fed to Instaparse at runtime? That being said, the current branding and na…

What do macros have to do with being functional? It might be better for a functional language to have that, but it doesn't have to have such a facility.

Re: Functional Go Programming Language

#5

Post by fisher-lebo »

stcredzero wrote: post #4
fisher-lebo wrote: post #3

I've toyed with this idea a bit (compiling a more familiar language down to Clojure). This project in particular gives some of the benefits of Clojure (JVM, expressive language, immutability), but I don't see any easy way to add new constructs to the language like macros without modifying the compiler itself. Can you modify the grammar that is fed to Instaparse at runtime? That being said, the current branding and na…

What do macros have to do with being functional? It might be better for a functional language to have that, but it doesn't have to have such a facility.

Macros have nothing to do with being functional, but macros are one of the major advantages of Clojure, and ideally there would be similar functionality in a language based on it (though not necessary).

Re: Functional Go Programming Language

#6

Post by bellerocky »

Maybe it would be cool to improve upon flex/bison/jison and make it easier for everyone to create or modify the programming language of their choice with platform plugins that let people connect their own programming language to the platform of their choice (JVM, .Net, straight up compiled into a binary). I'm really mostly thinking about syntax of the language really, but you could go further and customize the typing system and how scopes work and go all the way down the rabbit hole as much as you want. As long as the underlying base system is there, and it runs on the things you want it to run on, it would be fine.

Basically: Custom language -> some intermediary form which would probably end up having some restrictions on language design -> to the thing you want it to run on.

Re: Functional Go Programming Language

#7

Post by gnarbarian »

bellerocky wrote: post #6

Maybe it would be cool to improve upon flex/bison/jison and make it easier for everyone to create or modify the programming language of their choice with platform plugins that let people connect their own programming language to the platform of their choice (JVM, .Net, straight up compiled into a binary). I'm really mostly thinking about syntax of the language really, but you could go further and customize the typing…

well, the JVM is used in that way. So is the CLR in .Net.

But it sounds like you're implying another level of abstraction / interface that would be shared between the CLR and JVM etc.

Re: Functional Go Programming Language

#9

Post by micro_cam »

Glad to see a language taking inspiration from go. Are other targets (ie a cpython style native interpreter) being considered?

I'd love to see a scripting language with go's type system (and concise syntax for declaration, type inference and built in collections) but support for operator overloading and the ability to link in external shared libraries. Basically I want python+numpy (ie external C/fortran numerical code wrapped with pretty operator overloading and a repl) but with go style syntax and pointers.

Post reply on HN