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Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

pyret.org

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Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#21

Post by AstralStorm »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #5

Honestly imo Python is the best language to start with for learning. It has all the basic constructs of both functional and object oriented programming in plain english without a bunch of syntax to worry about. I personally think it's the most readable language. it's also quite intuitive imo. Lastly, there's a fantastic community and instant help is available for all skill levels but especially beginners on #python o…

Isn't readable?

It has mostly Python syntax. Some bits inspired by Standard ML, Ocaml, F# and Haskell. Nothing odd here. End marker prevents accidental scope overrun and is from Pascal I think.

Community is hard to get for any new language. If this got popular, there would be no such problems.

You're arguing that Python is Good Enough. But then, so was assembly.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#22

Post by cglouch »

danso wrote: post #14

Example from the OP: fun to-celsius(f): (f - 32) * (5 / 9) end What's the justification for allowing the use of hyphens/dashes in reference names, when underscores would seemingly provide the same purpose? One of the most common problems I notice in newbie code is inconsistency in using whitespace, e.g. `a-b` vs `a - b`, though in that situation, for Python and virtually every other language I've used, those both res…

Well as dumb as it sounds, one reason to allow hyphens instead of requiring underscores is that the former takes one keystroke to type, whereas the latter takes two. This is kind of nice when dealing with longer function names.

It's also worth noting that pyret requires spaces between all math operators, not just subtraction. In other words, 3+4 is not valid; you would need to type 3 + 4. So at least it's internally consistent in that sense.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#24

Post by AstralStorm »

dexwiz wrote: post #8
sdegutis wrote: post #3

> "while exploring the confluence of scripting and functional programming" Scripting and functional go amazing together, as long as it's (mostly) dynamic typing. In general, types really just get in the way when scripting or prototyping or trying to do anything fast, especially when you don't know the types of data you're going to be working with ahead of time, e.g. when it comes from a file or from an external API,…

Pretty sure its a union type.

Tagged union type, so no casting.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#25

Post by Jtsummers »

eykanal wrote: post #2

So, as someone without too much experience in language development, the concept of having unit tests being an extension of the functions themselves seems very interesting. Clearly this doesn't work for all scenarios—multiple functions interacting, any sort of GUI interaction—but that's a very intriguing concept.

They have a check clause which is detached from the functions themselves. This is where they would want you to do tests with multiple functions interacting.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#26

Post by cygned »

danso wrote: post #14

Example from the OP: fun to-celsius(f): (f - 32) * (5 / 9) end What's the justification for allowing the use of hyphens/dashes in reference names, when underscores would seemingly provide the same purpose? One of the most common problems I notice in newbie code is inconsistency in using whitespace, e.g. `a-b` vs `a - b`, though in that situation, for Python and virtually every other language I've used, those both res…

As a Clojure programmer, I learned to love hyphens, so much more readable. But since Clojure is a Lisp, is does not suffer this whitespace problem/confusion.

    (- a b)

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#27

Post by danso »

cglouch wrote: post #22
danso wrote: post #14

Example from the OP: fun to-celsius(f): (f - 32) * (5 / 9) end What's the justification for allowing the use of hyphens/dashes in reference names, when underscores would seemingly provide the same purpose? One of the most common problems I notice in newbie code is inconsistency in using whitespace, e.g. `a-b` vs `a - b`, though in that situation, for Python and virtually every other language I've used, those both res…

Well as dumb as it sounds, one reason to allow hyphens instead of requiring underscores is that the former takes one keystroke to type, whereas the latter takes two. This is kind of nice when dealing with longer function names. It's also worth noting that pyret requires spaces between all math operators, not just subtraction. In other words, 3+4 is not valid; you would need to type 3 + 4. So at least it's internally…

Not dumb at all...it's just that assuming that we spend more time re-reading code than we do in the initial writing of it, saving the keystroke from hyphen-to-understroke seems like premature optimization :).

Good to know that Pyret requires spacing between the other operators. That does help a lot, and an argument could be made that it forces folks to not do `a-b` when they mean `a - b`.

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#29

Post by AstralStorm »

Unexplained important things:

* concurrency, is there any nice built in syntax like Python async? Any kind of threading? Multiprocessing support?

* error handling, how is it done? Where are exceptions?

* standard and file io, string operations, serialisation?

* no builtin higher math types (matrix etc.), is math done on decimal floating point numbers?

* foreign functions, interfacing with other languages, embedding?

Re: Pyret – A language exploring scripting and functional programming

#30

Post by throwaway009912 »

reacweb wrote: post #18

When I was student, my favorite language syntax was Caml, the ancestor of OCaml. I am surprise there was comparison with many languages but not OCaml.

I was also surprised. The syntax they use is basically Standard ML. Also I'd really like to see a paper on their static type checking, because they mix objects and algebraic data types, which is not trivial at all.
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