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Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

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Re: Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

#21

Post by chc »

nene wrote: post #18
scott_s wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar reaction, and I'm not sure that it's a "damn kids, get off my lawn" reaction. Specifying an unambiguous grammar may be difficult - which implies parsing may become a problem. An implementation exists, so the author has something working, but I'm wondering how robust the parsing is. I haven't seen many code examples (only short fragments on the page), so I don't know what potential issues, if any, ther…

I already have hard time parsing this code. The main problem I see, is that to read the code I have to know every single keywords in the language. For example I was wondering if "new" is a keyword. If it is, then "new string ()" might be something interesting, otherwise it's just a function call. Similarly this raises a question of whether I can write the following code: if end of line (str) This might or might not b…

Your complaint is that you can't parse the code with 100% certainty without some basic knowledge of the language? That hardly seems like a complaint at all. The same is true of any language that isn't explicitly identical to one you already know.

Re: Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

#22

Post by Groxx »

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #11
psnj wrote: post #6

I was surprised by my almost-panicky reaction to seeing: Identifiers Can Have Blanks open_window_with_attributes(...) becomes: open window with attributes (...) I think I actually felt that wrongness in my stomach. Like a more intense version of seeing our corporate network shared drive's files with spaces and parens in them. I guess I'm old.

While i didn't panic, i find myself having quite a negative reaction to a language in which "Identifiers can have blanks" is listed under main features. EDIT : Also, i see quite the opportunity from wrong parsing, not on the machine side, but on the human side. blanks already have a function in other programming languages : They are here to separate symbols. By giving them this double meaning, you actually bring cont…

I don't see why parsing would be a problem; identifiers (and their pieces) always start with letters (so no "var 1"), alphanumerical, and cannot be a reserved word.

Meaning, parse word by word until you hit a key word or a significant character (,:". etc). You can't have "varb function(arg)" or its equivalent in any language I know, because it doesn't make sense - there's no operation on the varb, it's just "there". Similarly, "x y z = q r t" is unambiguous, because there's no stop to parsing either "x y z" or "q r t".

I think I'd like it. Hitting shift all the time, or reaching for "_" is a PITA and significantly slows my typing. It's especially annoying when you realize that identifiers with blanks could be leveraged into most languages with almost zero change to the parser, as long as it requires an end-of-statement terminator or ends on newlines.

Re: Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

#23

Post by mattmanser »

chc wrote: post #21
nene wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already have hard time parsing this code. The main problem I see, is that to read the code I have to know every single keywords in the language. For example I was wondering if "new" is a keyword. If it is, then "new string ()" might be something interesting, otherwise it's just a function call. Similarly this raises a question of whether I can write the following code: if end of line (str) This might or might not b…

Your complaint is that you can't parse the code with 100% certainty without some basic knowledge of the language? That hardly seems like a complaint at all. The same is true of any language that isn't explicitly identical to one you already know.

No, his complaint is that you can't parse the code without knowing all the keywords in the language.

He wrote every single keyword == all the keywords.

That's not basic knowledge of a language.

Maybe I'm odd, but when I start on a new language I don't learn all the syntax first, I usually I start mucking around with variable declaration, iterators, simple stuff like that just to get a feel of it. I'm guessing it's not that odd as most tutorials also follow that approach.

Re: Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

#24

Post by scott_s »

nene wrote: post #18
scott_s wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar reaction, and I'm not sure that it's a "damn kids, get off my lawn" reaction. Specifying an unambiguous grammar may be difficult - which implies parsing may become a problem. An implementation exists, so the author has something working, but I'm wondering how robust the parsing is. I haven't seen many code examples (only short fragments on the page), so I don't know what potential issues, if any, ther…

I already have hard time parsing this code. The main problem I see, is that to read the code I have to know every single keywords in the language. For example I was wondering if "new" is a keyword. If it is, then "new string ()" might be something interesting, otherwise it's just a function call. Similarly this raises a question of whether I can write the following code: if end of line (str) This might or might not b…

I thought of the recognizing a keyword issue, but then I dismissed it: syntax highlighting make it a non-issue. The ambiguity with using keywords in identifiers is valid, though.

Re: Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

#25

Post by chc »

mattmanser wrote: post #23
chc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your complaint is that you can't parse the code with 100% certainty without some basic knowledge of the language? That hardly seems like a complaint at all. The same is true of any language that isn't explicitly identical to one you already know.

No, his complaint is that you can't parse the code without knowing all the keywords in the language. He wrote every single keyword == all the keywords. That's not basic knowledge of a language. Maybe I'm odd, but when I start on a new language I don't learn all the syntax first, I usually I start mucking around with variable declaration, iterators, simple stuff like that just to get a feel of it. I'm guessing it's no…

I don't see how what you said disagrees with what I said aside from a minor semantic quibble. You can't parse any other language with certainty without knowing all the keywords either. For example, in Ruby, you might see the identifier "continue" by itself. Is this a method call, variable access or keyword? What about "private"? No way to know if you don't know all the keywords. This is precisely cognate with nene's objection that you can't tell whether "new" is a keyword in Zinc if you don't know the language's keywords.

You can form a rough guess of what the various tokens are in a snippet of Ruby code without knowing all the keywords, and you can do the same with Zinc code. Any additional difficulty is most likely because you're less familiar with Zinc, not because it has the nearly universal property of needing to know the full grammar to correctly parse arbitrary programs.

And I agree, playing around with a language is a great way to learn. But if you play around without reading about the things you're doing first, you should expect not to always know what you're doing. That's a huge part of the learning process.

Re: Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

#27

Post by jerf »

stcredzero wrote: post #13
jerf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That strikes me as giving lie to the "Ruby-like syntax" claim; ask a Ruby programmer what that line means and you will not get the correct answer for Zinc. Actually the connection with Ruby is tenuous anyhow; Ruby and assembler just don't go together. An assembler should produce a very clear one-to-one correspondence of instruction to machine language opcode, pretty much by definition. A high-level language can turn…

A high-level language can turn a simple statement into arbitrarily-complicated run-time code, pretty much by definition. There are some high level languages where there is a pretty straightforward one-to-one correspondence of statement to bytecode(s). There isn't much syntax cross-talk to be had there. Explain the existence of Forth.

I said "run-time code", not bytecodes. I'm talking about what actually executes. I've seen "bytecodes" that qualify as high-level languages by this standard, like CPython bytecode. Is that even so surprising? Single bytecodes for OO languages can translate to a lot of work to resolve.

And, what about Forth? It's a fairly low-level language by this standard. It has convenient ways to link together a lot of little functions, but one word does not dispatch on types and expand operator overloading and do the other things that can result in one line of C++ producing half a kilobyte of code, to say nothing of the functions that half-a-kilobyte may be invoking. Nor do I see why you think that's related to the syntax point.

I really have no idea what points you or your upmodders think you've won.

Re: Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

#28

Post by jbri »

chc wrote: post #25
mattmanser wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, his complaint is that you can't parse the code without knowing all the keywords in the language. He wrote every single keyword == all the keywords. That's not basic knowledge of a language. Maybe I'm odd, but when I start on a new language I don't learn all the syntax first, I usually I start mucking around with variable declaration, iterators, simple stuff like that just to get a feel of it. I'm guessing it's no…

I don't see how what you said disagrees with what I said aside from a minor semantic quibble. You can't parse any other language with certainty without knowing all the keywords either. For example, in Ruby, you might see the identifier "continue" by itself. Is this a method call, variable access or keyword? What about "private"? No way to know if you don't know all the keywords. This is precisely cognate with nene's…

No, you can't really do the same with Zinc. In Ruby, if there's a keyword somewhere, it's pretty damn obvious it's not part of an identifier.

With Zinc, you need to know what all the keywords are just to tell what the name of something is.

And that doesn't even start on additions to the language completely breaking your code because you used that word in an identifier somewhere...

Re: Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

#29

Post by JonnieCache »

psnj wrote: post #6

I was surprised by my almost-panicky reaction to seeing: Identifiers Can Have Blanks open_window_with_attributes(...) becomes: open window with attributes (...) I think I actually felt that wrongness in my stomach. Like a more intense version of seeing our corporate network shared drive's files with spaces and parens in them. I guess I'm old.

As much as your criticisms may be valid, I think he has given sufficient justification:

"I did this because I hate uppercase characters in the middle of identifiers and I'm too lazy to type shift to get the '_'. In addition, I find it more readable."

This kind of "Because I said so" reasoning is valid in pretty much any hobbyist-type situation as far as I'm concerned. If you don't like it, fork it.

Re: Zinc: a low level language between assembler, C and C++ with Ruby-like syntax

#30

Post by pjscott »

VMG wrote: post #20
Hexstream wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "I did this because I hate uppercase characters in the middle of identifiers and I'm too lazy to type shift to get the '_'. In addition, I find it more readable." just-use-lisp-style-identifiers-then

but then you sacrifice the "-" (minus) infix operator

Unless it's surrounded by spaces, which it probably should be anyway. Compare these pathological cases for either approach:

    one-thing - another-thing
vs.

    one thing-another thing
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