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The Flix Programming Language

flix.dev

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Re: The Flix Programming Language

#51

Post by jorkadeen »

imoverclocked wrote: post #26

Flix seems to be implemented in Scala 2.13. Should we expect Flix to work anywhere Scala 2.13 works? ie: if Scala 2.13 supports JDK 8, should we expect that Flix will not take advantage of later JVM features?

The implementation language does not affect the target "machine". Also Flix is implemented in both Scala and Flix (but GitHub does not yet recognize Flix code). Flix targets Java 11, but is moving to target Java 21, and will take advantage of all features available there, including Project Loom. We are just waiting for Java 21 to become a bit more widespread.

(I am one of the developers of Flix).

Re: The Flix Programming Language

#52

Post by amelius »

jorkadeen wrote: post #45

The website is infrequently updated, so let me provide some information about what we are currently working on: - We are trying to make the entire compiler resilient (error-tolerant), incremental, and parallel. We have managed to make every single compiler phase (of which there are 28) parallel. This has already led to significant speed-ups. We are now trying to increase the degree of parallelism within each phase. W…

Is the compiler written in Flix?

Re: The Flix Programming Language

#53

Post by shimst3r »

amelius wrote: post #52
jorkadeen wrote: post #45

The website is infrequently updated, so let me provide some information about what we are currently working on: - We are trying to make the entire compiler resilient (error-tolerant), incremental, and parallel. We have managed to make every single compiler phase (of which there are 28) parallel. This has already led to significant speed-ups. We are now trying to increase the degree of parallelism within each phase. W…

Is the compiler written in Flix?

Looking at the GitHub repo, it’s written in Scala.

Re: The Flix Programming Language

#54

Post by [deleted] »

jorkadeen wrote: post #45

The website is infrequently updated, so let me provide some information about what we are currently working on: - We are trying to make the entire compiler resilient (error-tolerant), incremental, and parallel. We have managed to make every single compiler phase (of which there are 28) parallel. This has already led to significant speed-ups. We are now trying to increase the degree of parallelism within each phase. W…

[deleted]

Re: The Flix Programming Language

#55

Post by sekao »

kaba0 wrote: post #46
brigandish wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't like "Unused definitions, type declarations, etc. are compile-time errors" as I often want to test the validity of a statement, like a type declaration, by compiling before using it. Much prefer warnings. I don't mind the disallowing name shadowing, but I really, really hate (I mean that) websites that are just good ol' text and the odd picture that require Javascript. The excuse of "we used React, it's…

> Unused definitions, type declarations, etc. are compile-time errors Any language that does it, is beyond usable (notably go and zig). Like, I would literally fork the compiler before using them with that “feature” on. It’s completely braindead thing to do — like okay, have a separate production release mode and make it an error there. But for quickly testing out stuff, you will inevitably comment something out, whi…

Zig and Go both let you silence the error with `_ = myvar`. It can still be annoying, but it avoids the recursive problem you mentioned. Language design is hard, and it's best to not just assume that people are "idiotic" for not thinking the way you do. Turn the volume down a bit, and maybe find a synonym for "literally" for the sake of variety.

Re: The Flix Programming Language

#56

Post by alexchamberlain »

IshKebab wrote: post #25

Top marks for the website - passes all the tests: * Example at the top * Link to playground * Explanation of all the features, with examples! * Says which features are unique The only thing I was found wondering was "why datalog"? Language looks pretty good.

Datalog is highly undervalued IMHO. You can describe quite complex relationships in your data, without telling the computer _how_ to realise them (as in imperatively). In fact, there are different strategies (forward vs backward chaining) where you may never realise the data at all.

Re: The Flix Programming Language

#57

Post by [deleted] »

usrbinbash wrote: post #20
globalnode wrote: post #6

do functional languages mainly appeal to computer language enthusiasts/researchers? im just not seeing the benefit personally.

Functional Programming was, for a long time, talked about as yet-another-solution to solve the issue of complexity in larger codebases, primarily the complexity of controlling state getting out o hand. Similar to OOP, which promised to do this by encapsulating state, FP promised to do this via purity, aka. getting rid of as much state as possible, and only allowing stateful transition at certain well defined sections…

[deleted]

Re: The Flix Programming Language

#58

Post by a-dub »

jorkadeen wrote: post #45

The website is infrequently updated, so let me provide some information about what we are currently working on: - We are trying to make the entire compiler resilient (error-tolerant), incremental, and parallel. We have managed to make every single compiler phase (of which there are 28) parallel. This has already led to significant speed-ups. We are now trying to increase the degree of parallelism within each phase. W…

looks very cool! has there been any talk of native codegen/backends and integration with newfangled cool kid ecosystems (rust, go, etc)?

Re: The Flix Programming Language

#59

Post by usrbinbash »

brabel wrote: post #37
usrbinbash wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Functional Programming was, for a long time, talked about as yet-another-solution to solve the issue of complexity in larger codebases, primarily the complexity of controlling state getting out o hand. Similar to OOP, which promised to do this by encapsulating state, FP promised to do this via purity, aka. getting rid of as much state as possible, and only allowing stateful transition at certain well defined sections…

> OOP simply came first Not really. Lisp is a functional programming language and has existed since at least 1960. Some claim there were many other proto-functional languages since the early 60's, and the FP language [1] (a clearly functional programming language and the result of the famous paper "Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?") appeared in 1977 - was inspired by much earlier efforts like…

> Not really.

*sight*

Okay, let's dot the i's and cross the t's then, shall we, and include languages used long long before software development became the industry behemoth it is today.

You're right. There, I said it. You are absolutely right.

Many of the concepts of functional programming were indeed pioneered in LISP, and it was indeed specified in 1960, 7 years before Simula.

But hey, let's dot another "i" and correct my statement. Because, FP isn't in contrast to OOP so much as it is in contrast to imperative programming, and all it's mutable state, right?

So, is there an imperative programming language, older than LISP, and still in use today? And the answer is: Of course there is ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran

Re: The Flix Programming Language

#60

Post by mrkeen »

discreteevent wrote: post #44
michaelsbradley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you worry about side-effects that leak beyond the scope of the routines you're authoring? Why / why not?

I don't worry about side effects because in practice they don't cause me many problems (although I do focus on isolating mutable state). But if I thought about it a lot then I might start to worry about the theoretical possibilities. So I think the question is well phrased. "Worry" is mainly psychological. Other advantages of pure FP might be thread safety but queues take care of most of this (and often locks are not…

> I don't worry about side effects because in practice they don't cause me many problems

You've selected for the work that you already do.

If you wanted to use transactions, you'd find them impossible, give up and go back to not having transactions.

And once you give up on the impossible dream of transactions, you're back to no problems in practice.

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