Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust • Hacker News Board

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#21

Post by jpc0 » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:26 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #19

jpc0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Border Gateway Protocol But I don’t even think people in networking would say that, it is canonically BGP. This is kind of like complaining about the abbreviation HTML, sure yes it is Hypertext Markup Language but everyone knows it as HTML to the point that there are probably people that don’t know it’s an abbreviation.

Agreed. There are almost certainly more people who know what "BGP" is than know what "Border Gateway Protocol" is. But it still would have been a favor to the original commenter to write "BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)". If you write just "BGP" you annoy the reader who doesn't know what it is; they'll think it's your fault. But if you write "BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)", they still won't know what it is but they won…

Someone linked a document a few weeks ago that address the topic of abbreviations and when the abbreviation is the common form it is acceptable to just use the abbreviation.

I don’t think anyone in their right mind would open every article with HTML(Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS( Cascading Style Sheets).

For networking it would be the same with BGP/OSPF/RIP.

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#22

Post by axegon_ » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

Philpax wrote: post #11

90s_dev wrote: post #2

> Finally, we want a language that is easy to pick up; it should feel like a statically typed version of scripting languages you're used to. It looks like Rust. All Rust scripting languages do. Is this true for all other languages? Is this just a property of embeddable scripting languages, they will always resemble the language they're implemented in and meant to be embedded in?

People who become proficient in Rust generally enjoy the syntax, so they want to carry it across. (As someone proficient in Rust who has pondered their ideal scripting language, I would have done the same.) To your more general question: it depends. AngelScript [0] looks very much like C++, while others, like Lua, don't. It's really up to the designer's discretion. [0]: https://www.angelcode.com/angelscript/ , but ht…

> who has pondered their ideal scripting language

Et tu, brute? :D

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#23

Post by echelon » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:38 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #17

> Roto fills this niche for us. In short, it's a statically typed, JIT compiled, hot-reloadable, embedded scripting language. To get good performance, Roto scripts are compiled to machine code at runtime with the cranelift compiler backend. Statically typed, hot reloadable scripting? Sign me up.

I have dreamed of this for Rust. It is literally _the_ killer app to have a fast scripting language that pairs with Rust well.

With fast development cycles and a safe scripting language, Rust will find itself in every single programming niche. Server development, game development, desktop application development. If the WASM DOM bridge gets better, maybe even web development. Everything will open up.

You can prototype in the scripting language, write mature application logic in the scripting language, and for the parts that matter, move them to Rust.

I hope Roto can be that. There are lots of other Rust scripting languages that fall short.

A good scripting language will have great Rust interop, similar syntax, and allow simple calling and passing of data structures. It shouldn't weaken Rust in any way.

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#24

Post by lewisjoe » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

ELI5: Why not use typescript and an embedded v8 engine or deno to run them? What kind of advantages will I miss if I go for typescript as an embedded language for my application?

Also by using v8, I open up new possiblities via wasm (write in any lang and run it here?)

Will be helpful if somebody enlighten me.

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#25

Post by diggan » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

stirfish wrote: post #3

Roto means "broken" in Spanish.

Just add a "Huevos" prefix and a "S" at the end of the name, and suddenly you're thinking of delicious food instead.

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#26

Post by lynndotpy » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:41 PM UTC

Woah, this looks awesome.

One of my favorite things about writing Rust is that it's expression-oriented (i.e. almost everything is an expression), something you almost never see in non-functional languages.

I was wondering if Roto is also expression-oriented?

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#27

Post by speed_spread » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:42 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #17

> Roto fills this niche for us. In short, it's a statically typed, JIT compiled, hot-reloadable, embedded scripting language. To get good performance, Roto scripts are compiled to machine code at runtime with the cranelift compiler backend. Statically typed, hot reloadable scripting? Sign me up.

Then also have a look at Mun:

https://github.com/mun-lang/mun

- Ahead of time compilation

- Statically typed

- First class hot-reloading

Not sure how both languages compare though

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#28

Post by diggan » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #20

jpc0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Border Gateway Protocol But I don’t even think people in networking would say that, it is canonically BGP. This is kind of like complaining about the abbreviation HTML, sure yes it is Hypertext Markup Language but everyone knows it as HTML to the point that there are probably people that don’t know it’s an abbreviation.

A LLM response so don't trust it, but Biological and Genetic Programming: In biology, BGP can refer to methods or algorithms used in genetic programming or bioinformatics. BGP (Bureau of Governmental Personnel): In some governmental contexts, BGP may refer to a specific bureau or office related to personnel management. BGP (Bureau of Geographical Planning): In urban planning or geography, it might refer to a bureau t…

Is that the response from google/gemma-3-1b-it or something? Almost funny how off it is.

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#29

Post by ijustlovemath » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

lewisjoe wrote: post #24

ELI5: Why not use typescript and an embedded v8 engine or deno to run them? What kind of advantages will I miss if I go for typescript as an embedded language for my application? Also by using v8, I open up new possiblities via wasm (write in any lang and run it here?) Will be helpful if somebody enlighten me.

sounds like it's not fast enough for their use case. plus, have you ever tried to integrate v8 into a project? Deno is fine for building binaries, but to date doesn't really have good support out of the box for bundling a script into a library, which this application seems like it would need.

Re: Roto: A Compiled Scripting Language for Rust

#30

Post by airstrike » Wed, May 21, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

lewisjoe wrote: post #24

ELI5: Why not use typescript and an embedded v8 engine or deno to run them? What kind of advantages will I miss if I go for typescript as an embedded language for my application? Also by using v8, I open up new possiblities via wasm (write in any lang and run it here?) Will be helpful if somebody enlighten me.

Why would I want to bundle an entire JS runtime? And why do you think you need that for WASM?

And personally I will go out of my way to not use TS/JS if I can