janet VS Fennel

I first came across something like this in janet, which includes a PEG system in the standard library. It definitely changed how I think about text processing. Very much of the time what I find myself doing with regex is defining a grammar, but I didn't realize that. I wish more languages included the tools for it, it's a core operation of practical programming.

https://janet-lang.org

...I of course would rather embed Janet [1], but I realize what is going to have an easier time gaining popularity %) Also, Lua has Löve [2] which could be immediately usable, among other things.

[1]: https://janet-lang.org/

[2]: https://www.love2d.org/

I don't think it has absolutely all that, but janet might be close?

https://janet-lang.org/

> Would you write your own JSON parser, is it that easy in LISP?

I only dally with Lisp(s) but probably not, I'd reach for a library in quicklisp.

However, in Janet (https://janet-lang.org/) there's a PEG parser and I wrote a JSON parser for fun in 134 lines that passes most of the test suite by Nicolas Seriot.

So I'd say it's reasonably easy for a better-skilled programmer than I am.

Only tangentially related, but for anyone interested in the idea of a simple, quick Python-like scripting Lisp, there are two Clojure-style languages to look at:

1) Hy (https://hylang.org/, compiles to Python bytecode, usually slower than Python but compatible with all Python libraries)

2) Janet (https://janet-lang.org/, very light Lua-style embeddable VM ~1 Mb, roughly twice as fast as Python for similar ops, very easy C interop)

Seems like a perfect use-case for Janet. (https://janet-lang.org/) A fast minimal VM like Lua, but even more extensible than Lua by being a "Lisp" with macro and C extension capabilities. Not a true Lisp, it's very pragmatic and performance-oriented. But it keeps the good stuff.

You might be looking for: https://janet-lang.org/

It comes with a build tool `jpm` which installs dependencies globally by default, but you can have it be installed in your project folder as well.

I like Clojure, but I never had any good opportunities to use it other than for a few small hobby projects. It is unfortunate that it is so huge with tons of dependencies and no simpler native implementation. I started looking at various LISPs and Schemes to find something lighter to use instead and ended up settling for Janet that I think is Clojure-like enough to be comfortable to use, but in a small native binary with no dependencies and can be embedded in other native programs. I am sure for big, real, projects that Clojure makes more sense, but for my hobby projects and scripts I do not think I will install it again. I am still happy for the things I learned from learning Clojure. It was a real eye-opener for an old OO-programmer.

https://janet-lang.org/

And personally wrapping your lua code in https://fennel-lang.org/ would be nice.

This way with libcosmopolitan, you could just checkin a copy of your build tool in a project, to be self sufficient. Think of it like gradlew( the gradle bash/bat wrapper) but completely self contained and air gapped

You can use functional versions which compile to Lua code, like Fennel https://fennel-lang.org/

It's interesting: minimal software is out there, but folks don't tend to choose it. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how to be conservative in my dependencies, and this encourages a lightweight stack that tends to perform pretty well. These days, I'm favoring tools like Lua, SQLite, Fennel[0], Althttpd[1], Fossil[2], and the Mako Server[3] and find that great, lightweight, stable, efficient software is to be had, for free, but you have to go a bit off the beaten path. This isn't stuff you hear about on Stack Overflow.

In terms of frontend, which the post focuses on (Google Docs and a 30MB doc), I guess I'm conflicted. While I tend to favor native apps + web pages, I'm also a daily Tiddlywiki user, and I really think web apps have their place (heck, one idea I'm working on is a lightweight local server that lets you run web apps like Tiddlywiki). But without a doubt, Tiddlywiki is more resource intensive than Emacs (my go-to for notetaking when I'm not on TW). My tab for a 6MB Tiddlywiki file uses 155MB of RAM, and my (heavily customized, dozens of open buffers) Emacs session uses 88MB. So I do think the author has a good point.

[0]: https://fennel-lang.org/

Eh it's not just luajit and luajit didn't create that problem either. It's a symptom of lua actually succeeding at its design goal of being easily embedded as an extension language. A significant number of incompatible runtimes are more popular than the most recent puc lua, including I believe the older official lua 5.2 released in 2011.

I've done a fair bit of professional lua development and I don't think I've ever written standalone up-to-date puc lua except maybe for some tooling & scripts. It's such a small language and used in such a way that the runtime, distribution method, and available APIs have much more impact on your use (and compatibility) than the version.

Virtually everyone shipping a lua environment is also shipping changes to it that make it a unique target, if only extensions to the standard library. This is why I think syntax layer-only approach like fennel's is the correct choice for improving on lua. It mirrors lua's runtime semantics exactly, and allows you to access the implementation peculiars on their own terms and so can just be run on time of any lua system.

https://fennel-lang.org

Just learned about https://fennel-lang.org/ , could have probably used that as well to avoid Lua.

> I’m positive that there is a Lispy language out there (actually in existence, or the aether) that is appropriate for embedded work, but the constraints of the target make it difficult to envision.

Perhaps Fennel* fits the bill?

* https://fennel-lang.org/

I've also seen neovim plugins written in fennel [0], so if you want something lispy, that's possible now.

[0]: a Lisp that compiles to Lua, https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel