inko
ponyc
inko | ponyc | |
---|---|---|
11 | 61 | |
742 | 5,602 | |
3.6% | 0.2% | |
9.4 | 9.2 | |
5 days ago | 4 days ago | |
Rust | C | |
Mozilla Public License 2.0 | BSD 2-clause "Simplified" License |
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inko
- A language like C, but with a borrow-checker
- Ask HN: Which language will you try for this year's Advent of Code and why?
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Inko Programming Language
I have mixed feelings on Rust's syntax, especially around generics, lifetimes, and the `modifier -> keyword` syntax (i.e. `async fn` or `pub fn`). For Inko, I wanted something that's easy to parse by hand, and no context specific parsing (e.g. `QUOTE -> something` being the start of a lifetime in one place, but a char literal in another place).
Another motivator for that is that years ago I worked on Rubinius for a while (an implementation of Ruby), and helped out with a parser for Ruby (https://github.com/whitequark/parser). The Ruby developers really liked changing their already impossible syntax in even more impossible ways on a regular basis, making it a real challenge to provide syntax related tools that support multiple Ruby versions. I wanted to avoid making the same mistake with Inko, hence I'm actively trying to keep the syntax as simple as is reasonable.
As for the specific examples:
- `fn async` means your parser only needs to look for `A | B | fn` in a certain scope, instead of `A | B | fn | async fn`. This cuts down the amount of repetition in the parser. An example is found at https://github.com/inko-lang/inko/blob/8f5ad1e56756fe00325a3..., which parses the body of a class definition.
- Skipping parentheses is directly lifted from Ruby, because I really like it. Older versions took this further by also letting you write `function arg1 arg2`, but I got rid of that to make parsing easier. It's especially nice so you can do things like `if foo.bar.baz? { ... }` instead of `if foo().bar().baz?()`, though I suspect opinions will differ on this :)
- Until recently we did in fact use `::` as a namespace separator, but I changed that to `.` to keep things consistent with the call syntax, and because it removes the need for remembering "Oh for namespaces I need to use ::, but for calls .".
- `[T]` for generics is because most editors automatically insert a closing `]` if you type `[`, but not when you type `<`. If they do, then trying to write `10<20` is annoying because you'd end up with `10<>20`. I also just like the way it looks more. The usual ambiguity issues surrounding `<>` (e.g. what leads to `foo::()` in Rust) doesn't apply to Inko, because we don't allow generics in expressions (i.e. `Array[Int].with_capacity(42)` isn't valid syntax) in the first place.
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Type inference of local variable based on later operations
Inko supports this in its type checker. The implementation is both surprisingly simple and tricky, and works roughly as follows:
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The Rust I Wanted Had No Future
Perhaps it's worth looking into Inko? I apologise if I'm shilling my own project a bit too hard here, but reading through the comments it does seem people would be interested in what it's trying to do :)
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The Rust I wanted had no future
Perhaps you'd be interested in Inko (https://inko-lang.org/). It's obviously not there yet in terms of tooling and what not, but it might scratch an itch for those looking for something a bit like Rust, but easier to use.
Disclaimer: I'm the author of said language :)
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Does modern implementation use tagged pointers/values?
Inko currently uses tagged pointers, though this is a remnant from when it was still using a VM. I'm working on replacing this with a better solution. In short: for a compiled language I don't think there's really a benefit to using pointer tagging.
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"Linear style" and the spectrum of zero-cost to memory safety overhead
I think Inko shows this behavior too, where a linear-style program suddenly has zero cost. (Yorick, sanity check me on this?)
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Thoughts on designing a stack base VM and byte code
For opcodes you can also use a third option: you use a single struct for all opcodes, and size it to support a fixed number of arguments. Most opcodes probably won't need more than 4-5 arguments. If those argument values are small enough (e.g. u16), you don't need that much space. You can find an example of this here, with the Instruction type only taking up 12 bytes.
ponyc
- Old Version
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The problem with general purpose programming languages
For example, the actor's model is not used by a lot of languages, Pony (https://www.ponylang.io/) and Elixir are the only ones that I know, but they address the concurrency problem quite well, while it's a pain to deal with in other languages at large scale.
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Found a language in development called Vale which claims to be the safest AOT compiled language in the World (Claims to beSafer than Rust)
And that last point is critical. If the language flatly can't represent some concepts it uses, they have to be implemented somewhere else. I had a similar discussion with a proponent for Pony once- the language itself is 100% safe, and fully dependent on C for its runtime and data structures. One of Rust's core strengths is being able to express unsafe concepts, meaning the unsafe code can expose a safe interface that accurately describes its requirements rather than an opaque C ABI. Vale doesn't seem to do that.
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The Rust I wanted had no future
"Exterior iteration. Iteration used to be by stack / non-escaping coroutines, which we also called "interior" iteration, as opposed to "exterior" iteration by pointer-like things that live in variables you advance. Such coroutines are now finally supported by LLVM (they weren't at the time) and are actually a fairly old and reliable mechanism for a linking-friendly, not-having-to-inline-tons-of-library-code abstraction for iteration. They're in, like, BLISS and Modula-2 and such. Really normal thing to have, early Rust had them, and they got ripped out for a bunch of reasons that, again, mostly just form "an argument I lost" rather than anything I disagree with today. I wish Rust still had them. Maybe someday it will!"
I remember that one. The change was shortly after I started fooling with Rust and was major. Major as in it broke all the code that I'd written to that point.
"Async/await. I wanted a standard green-thread runtime with growable stacks -- essentially just "coroutines that escape, when you need them too"."
I remember that one, too; it was one of the things that drew me to the language---I was imagining something more like Pony (https://www.ponylang.io/).
"The Rust I Wanted probably had no future, or at least not one anywhere near as good as The Rust We Got."
Almost certainly true. But The Rust We Got is A Better C++, which was never appealing to me because I never liked C++ anyway.
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How long until Rust becomes mandatory, and use of any other language opens the developer up to Reckless Endangerment charges
Pony or bust.
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Universal parameter passing semantics
If you have a value in mutable storage, and want to treat it as an immutable parameter without copying it first, you will need to provide some way to guarantee that it won't be mutated while being treated as immutable! There doesn't seem to be a definitive best way to do that (although the likes of Pony make a try at it).
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Virtual Threads Arrive in JDK 21, Ushering a New Era of Concurrency
The love child of Erlang and Rust exists already: Pony.
https://www.ponylang.io
It really is the best of both languages... unfortunately, the main supporter of Pony seems to have stopped using it in favour of Rust though :D.
But if that's really what you want, Pony is your language. It definitely deserves more love.
- Programming language rule
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Why Turborepo is migrating from Go to Rust – Vercel
You can actually try to have a magic language which "does not ignore decades of PL research" but you are likely to get either something broken or a project that is likely not going to release in our lifetime.
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Show HN: Ractor – a Rust-based actor framework with clusters and supervisors
Never a bad time to plug Pony lang[1] - a safety-oriented actor-model language. In addition to the numerous safety guarantees, you also get a beautiful syntax and automatic memory management. Really a great language that often gets overshadowed by Rust's hype-turfing.
[1]: https://www.ponylang.io/
What are some alternatives?
llrl - An experimental Lisp-like programming language
gleam - ⭐️ A friendly language for building type-safe, scalable systems!
rust-langdev - Language development libraries for Rust
Halide - a language for fast, portable data-parallel computation
lltz - LLTZ: Compiler from MLIR to Michelson
prolog-to-minizinc - A Prolog-to-MiniZinc translator
brainfk-rs - Compiles brainfuck to wasm!!
Phoenix - wxPython's Project Phoenix. A new implementation of wxPython, better, stronger, faster than he was before.
logic - Logic backend implementation for Robot Rumble
tab-rs - The intuitive, config-driven terminal multiplexer designed for software & systems engineers
parser - A Ruby parser.
Nim - Nim is a statically typed compiled systems programming language. It combines successful concepts from mature languages like Python, Ada and Modula. Its design focuses on efficiency, expressiveness, and elegance (in that order of priority).