Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
#2GitHub doesn't recognize this enough to summarize it, and that last paragraph seems weird to me; is this a customized license of one that I might recognize? https://github.com/chronologicaldot/CopperLang/blob/master/l...
Re: Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
#3I wonder what "loose syntax" is supposed to mean here. No semicolons at the ends of lines? OK. Optional commas between function arguments? Hum. But at the same time this seems to require colons after... what exactly? Variable read accesses in argument lists? Unintuitive and not exactly "loose".
Re: Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
#4GitHub doesn't recognize this enough to summarize it, and that last paragraph seems weird to me; is this a customized license of one that I might recognize? https://github.com/chronologicaldot/CopperLang/blob/master/l...
The license seems self-contradictory. On one hand it says "THIS SOFTWARE MAY BE USED, MODIFIED, REDISTRIBUTED, DECOMPILED, DISASSEMBLED, REVERSE-ENGINEERED AND INCORPORATED INTO OTHER WORKS FREELY"
So, it can be used and incorporated freely, but it also says "YOU ARE NOT GRANTED LEGAL AUTHORITY OVER THE USAGE, PROTECTION, AND DISTRIBUTION OF THIS SOFTWARE." so you don't have legal authority over its usage. IANAL, but that seems to limit one's own authority over one's own work based on this software. It's very confusing.
Re: Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
#5GitHub doesn't recognize this enough to summarize it, and that last paragraph seems weird to me; is this a customized license of one that I might recognize? https://github.com/chronologicaldot/CopperLang/blob/master/l...
The license seems self-contradictory. On one hand it says "THIS SOFTWARE MAY BE USED, MODIFIED, REDISTRIBUTED, DECOMPILED, DISASSEMBLED, REVERSE-ENGINEERED AND INCORPORATED INTO OTHER WORKS FREELY" So, it can be used and incorporated freely, but it also says "YOU ARE NOT GRANTED LEGAL AUTHORITY OVER THE USAGE, PROTECTION, AND DISTRIBUTION OF THIS SOFTWARE." so you don't have legal authority over its usage. IANAL, but…
The guy who wrote it isn't a lawyer either.
Re: Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
#6I wonder what "loose syntax" is supposed to mean here. No semicolons at the ends of lines? OK. Optional commas between function arguments? Hum. But at the same time this seems to require colons after... what exactly? Variable read accesses in argument lists? Unintuitive and not exactly "loose".
No semicolons are ever required. It is loose syntax in that most anything, including this paragraph, is valid and readable code
Re: Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
#7I wonder what "loose syntax" is supposed to mean here. No semicolons at the ends of lines? OK. Optional commas between function arguments? Hum. But at the same time this seems to require colons after... what exactly? Variable read accesses in argument lists? Unintuitive and not exactly "loose".
No semicolons are ever required. It is loose syntax in that most anything, including this paragraph, is valid and readable code
That's still not very helpful to me. You might want to explain it a bit more in the README.
For example, taking this line from the first example:
this.peek = +(this.a: this.b:)
this.peek = +(this.a: this.b:
I know that Forth is "loose syntax" in that Forth code is just a sequence of white-space separated words, so your comment and mine are both syntactically valid Forth, but without meaningful semantics. But Forth does not use parenthesized function calls the way Copper does.
Re: Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
No semicolons are ever required. It is loose syntax in that most anything, including this paragraph, is valid and readable code
That's still not very helpful to me. You might want to explain it a bit more in the README. For example, taking this line from the first example: this.peek = +(this.a: this.b:) If I replace this by: this.peek = +(this.a: this.b: (note the dropped closing parenthesis) and leave everything else as is, that will not be a syntax error? I know that Forth is "loose syntax" in that Forth code is just a sequence of white-spa…
I see what you're getting at. Yes, a ) is needed... eventually. I think the key with "loose" is that it's forgiving. You won't encounter many syntax errors in average programming because the syntax has few rules. In that case, "very simple" would be better said than "loose".
Re: Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
#9GitHub doesn't recognize this enough to summarize it, and that last paragraph seems weird to me; is this a customized license of one that I might recognize? https://github.com/chronologicaldot/CopperLang/blob/master/l...
The license seems self-contradictory. On one hand it says "THIS SOFTWARE MAY BE USED, MODIFIED, REDISTRIBUTED, DECOMPILED, DISASSEMBLED, REVERSE-ENGINEERED AND INCORPORATED INTO OTHER WORKS FREELY" So, it can be used and incorporated freely, but it also says "YOU ARE NOT GRANTED LEGAL AUTHORITY OVER THE USAGE, PROTECTION, AND DISTRIBUTION OF THIS SOFTWARE." so you don't have legal authority over its usage. IANAL, but…
What you intend essentially corresponds to the two-clause BSD or the MIT license. Here is a good summary: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/217/what-are-...
Your statement "you are not granted legal authority ..." essentially means that you are the copyright owner and don't want to give away your copyright, but only give a license to others as explicitly stated; that's essentially the default in all jurisdictions I'm aware of, so you don't have to repeat it in your license. But if you're in US you might want to register your copyright.
Re: Copper: A statically-typed, loose syntax programming language
#10(Edit: this comes across a bit aggressive, not meant so).
What benefits does copper bring over other langs?
Also loose is a bad move. Loose semantics proved a mistake (PL1), loose syntax brings nothing to the party. Semicolons were used in pascal because wirth understood parsing, and they are there to help the parser resync after a syntax error is detected.
From experience if you make semicolons optional as in sql, it helps not at all, AND they are (said by microsoft to) become mandatory in future releases of TSQL, AND I and at least some other users of SQL want them mandatory.
I also don't understand why a non-typical syntax is used. Not at all saying it's wrong but it seems to differ from other syntactic conventions only to be different rather than better (I may be wrong!). Why "gte(a: 100)"? Syntax matters to a degree, why diverge?