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Streem – a new programming language from Matz

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Re: Streem – a new programming language from Matz

#11
post #3

Why do most implementations of FizzBuzz special case % 15? I haven't ever really understood this. Maybe it's just my math-y background, but it always seemed to me you should just check mod 3 and mod 5 without an else between them, concatenating Fizz and Buzz. Can anyone else comment on this? Most canonical FizzBuzz programs special case 15, and I don't get it.

I do that too. It seems more in the spirit of the problem. For an alternate problem, in which you are asked to print strings a, b and c (!= a concat b) if the number is divisible by 3, 5 and 15 respectively, it makes sense to special case 15.

Re: Streem – a new programming language from Matz

#12
post #6

I'm not really a programming language expert, but it seems to me that having an implementation being the spec wouldn't be a good idea. If the Streem implementation has a bug, then the bug becomes the authoritative behavior. Any platform specific quirks would also make it difficult to have defined behavior.

There's an old argument about worse is better. The gist is, doing things the right way is hard and takes a long time. sometimes, it's better to just get something simple out there and deal with the problems later.

http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

Re: Streem – a new programming language from Matz

#13
post #6

I'm not really a programming language expert, but it seems to me that having an implementation being the spec wouldn't be a good idea. If the Streem implementation has a bug, then the bug becomes the authoritative behavior. Any platform specific quirks would also make it difficult to have defined behavior.

Sure, but this is not finished at all. Starting with the spec instead of a prototype implementation sounds like a very very limiting and unrewarding design process.

Re: Streem – a new programming language from Matz

#18
post #7

At the very least, it's going to be amazing to watch a master language designer build a new language from the ground up. That said, I'm incredibly optimistic about a new Matz language. If I was going to guess, the syntax will be much lighter and the semantics will make VM optimization much easier than in Ruby.

dude, the man publishes 3 files, claims he's going to make a new programming language, and it hits the front page of hackernews -- Matz has some power there.

Re: Streem – a new programming language from Matz

#19
post #7

At the very least, it's going to be amazing to watch a master language designer build a new language from the ground up. That said, I'm incredibly optimistic about a new Matz language. If I was going to guess, the syntax will be much lighter and the semantics will make VM optimization much easier than in Ruby.

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