[HN Gopher] The Programming Language Zoo
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       The Programming Language Zoo
        
       Author : creata
       Score  : 111 points
       Date   : 2021-05-03 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (plzoo.andrej.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (plzoo.andrej.com)
        
       | 0xDEEPFAC wrote:
       | Could Ada++ be part of the Zoo? xD
        
         | Jtsummers wrote:
         | It's not a miniature language, nor is it a real language.
        
           | 0xDEEPFAC wrote:
           | Sounds like a pedantic distinction without a difference ; )
        
             | Jtsummers wrote:
             | Is it pedantic to point out that Ada++ is inconsistent with
             | the objective of the site:
             | 
             | > The Programming Languages Zoo is a collection of
             | _miniature programming languages_ which demonstrates
             | various concepts and techniques used in programming
             | language design and implementation. It is a good starting
             | point for those who would like to implement their own
             | programming language, or just learn how it is done.
             | [emphasis added]
             | 
             | And I know you've posted about Ada++ a few times (I thought
             | I recognized your name, you were the submitter the day
             | after April Fool's Day), but Ada++ is still not a real
             | language. At best it's a cosmetic (and poorly done)
             | transformation of Ada itself. I mean, this is a code sample
             | from the site:                 case Variable:         when
             | 0      => Put_Line ("Zero");         when 1 .. 9 =>
             | Put_Line ("Positive Digit");         when 10 | 12 | 14 | 16
             | | 18 =>           Put_Line ("Even Number between 10 and
             | 18");         when others => Put_Line ("Something else");
             | }
             | 
             | Note the weird mismatch of the : as the starting delimiter
             | for the block and } for the closing delimiter. Because
             | literally `is` becomes `:` and `end` becomes `}`, and
             | `begin` becomes `{`. Since `case` statements in Ada don't
             | use `begin` but _do_ use `is` you end up with this gross
             | translation.
        
       | hardwaregeek wrote:
       | Mini languages are so fun! I wrote an absurd language for my
       | GraalVM internship application that's implemented in Ruby, Java
       | and JavaScript. Quite absurd but a lot of fun:
       | https://github.com/nicholaslyang/for-the-graal
        
       | Jtsummers wrote:
       | This is cool, and amusingly I wrote a simple calculator over the
       | weekend (and will be adding variables this week when I get back
       | to it) for a demo for work. minikanren or microkanren would be a
       | good addition to this. There's already miniprolog so there's some
       | overlap, but it's a well-defined language that's about the same
       | size as some of these.
        
         | slaymaker1907 wrote:
         | I think there is still value in minikanren since it uses a
         | different evaluation strategy than Prolog. While Prolog just
         | has to support backtracking when things fail, minikanren
         | requires much more interleaving of code paths.
         | 
         | In terms of implementation, you can probably implement
         | backtracking good enough for Prolog via backtracking, but you
         | really need immutable maps for minikanren due to the
         | interleaving. On the prolog side of things, prolog
         | implementations typically care a lot more about being able to
         | dynamically interact with the database including
         | adding/retracing goals. Finally, minikanren tends to play nicer
         | when combined with another language compared to prolog so it
         | might be interesting to do include have it embedded in another
         | language.
        
       | qsort wrote:
       | Some of them also have compilers to a simplified machine object
       | code. This is seriously amazing. I doubt I'll get anything else
       | done for the rest of the day :D
        
       | franga2000 wrote:
       | The primary (?) author of this site (Andrej Bauer) is a professor
       | at the University of Ljubljana. I'm currently in his Principles
       | of Programming Languages course and I have to say, it is the one
       | and only "theoretical" CS subject that I've really enjoyed!
       | 
       | Old recordings of his other classes are also the only thing that
       | helped me actually understand proofs of program correctness last
       | semester. Seriously, I went through all our lectures and basic
       | materials twice and still didn't get it. Then someone sent me one
       | of his recordings and in 30 minutes, it all just clicked for me.
       | Ended up getting 100% on that part of the exam, where before I
       | wasn't sure I'd even pass.
        
       | whitten wrote:
       | I'm not expecting anyone to actually already have this done, but
       | I would like to suggest that with the toy languages that a walk
       | through of how to set up a language server protocol for the
       | language would be rather helpful, and educational. This page
       | claims to be a good starting point
       | https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-03 23:01 UTC)