setup VS moonscript

https://github.com/kbd/binrun

I just wrote it today and still need to package it. I was tired of alt+tab + up arrow + enter constantly to execute builds etc. in my terminal. It calls out to a wrapper script I wrote[1] that does things like queries kitty for its running windows so that when I launch from vscode it can find the right kitty window for the vscode workspace and execute there...

Point is, Kovid Goyal is awesome and the extensibility he wrote into kitty makes all that possible. I had no idea he was also the author of Calibre until I'd been using kitty for a while.

[1] https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/master/HOME/bin/kw

If anyone cares, here's my config: https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/master/HOME/.hammerspoon/i...

It shows off a tiny bit of what you can do with Hammerspoon:

- window and app management

I'll put it this way: Nu shell seems perfectly supportive of my philosophy that a shell is basically a REPL for a computer, and they're taking the ergonomics of an interactive REPL along with the programming language that powers that REPL seriously.

The thing is, there's currently NOTHING GOOD for "shell scripting". Shell sucks (yes it does), so for anything more than very short things I'd rather write Python. But Python sucks for shell-like things, parallelization, it has slow startup, and you also can't do things like put environment variables into your session or change the working directory, so you often wind up writing shims (eg. Broot's br alias - https://dystroy.org/broot/install-br/).

Yes I've looked at Xonsh but maybe the additional syntax is offputting to me. Like, I wouldn't use it as a shell over Zsh (how's Xonsh's fzf support? I don't know, but I know everything's going to support Zsh), and I dunno if I want to use its syntax extensions over just Python. Though It's always on my list of things to re-explore, and maybe it'll click one day. But it being based in Python makes it feel slow (I wrote my prompt in Zig to get it to be fast...)

This is relevant to mention: I wrote a small Python library (https://github.com/kbd/aush) that's basically a DSL for subprocesses, so it tries to make it more convenient to do shell-like things. I find it preferable to shell or Python alone most of the time. Here's an example of its use in my script that creates a new Python project: https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/master/HOME/bin/create-pyt...

I haven't figured out a convenient way to implement shell piping well with Python's pipe operator, or pass through interactive output directly (so things that "update" the display, like poetry and npm don't behave the same as they do interactively) so it's still .9 status, but it works really well for what it is, and you can always write "regular Python" along with it.

Anyway, Nu seems to be an attempt to put a "real" programming language REPL in my shell, from people who have serious language experience, so I'm hopeful it'll be great.

Just sharing my take on that interactive jq (or anything else) repl:

https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/master/HOME/bin/fzr

It's just an fzf wrapper that sets up temporary files and so on. It works really well; it's amazing all the things one can use fzf for.

Since we're sharing, my dotfiles setup has pretty much reached its final form. I use my symgr[1] to symlink my dotfiles repo into my home dir. Pretty much everything I think about this topic is in its readme, as well as a link to my setup[2] repo with my dotfiles showing how I use symgr.

[1] https://github.com/kbd/symgr

[2] https://github.com/kbd/setup

It's not exactly a tiling window manager, but if you can program some simple Lua then Hammerspoon is a godsend. You can program anything any of the other window managers for Mac (like Rectangle, Spectacle, etc.) can do and have complete freedom to set up your own keyboard shortcuts for anything.

I have some predefined layouts[1] for my most common usage. So, one keyboard shortcut arranges the screen how I want, and I have other keyboard shortcuts[2] (along with using Karabiner Elements for a 'hyper' key) to open or switch to common apps.

[1] https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/1a05e5df545db0133cf7b6f1bc...

[2] https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/1a05e5df545db0133cf7b6f1bc...

Figured I'd link my git aliases here, that make heavy use of fzf. The goal is generally to never have to type a filename (eg. for git add) or a commit hash (eg. for cherry-pick).

Here's a link to my 'cp' alias that lets me choose a branch, then a commit to cherry pick into my current branch:

https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/e23b3e8e2363284c3c766c0be2...

Now I like lua, and think single pass is the way to go for interpreted, since you don't have the disadvantage of a slow compile time no matter how big your codebase gets, BUT its not great to write in. things like +=, ++, are not possible, which means the only solution is to transpile into it, which has led to some good languages like moonscript[0], teal[1] which offers static type checking, an absolute must as your codebase grows.

[0]: https://moonscript.org/

That can be very productive and clever, but be - and stay - aware that such polyglot solutions tend to be maintenance headaches in the longer run.

There is a really nice open source project out there that allows you to train your hearing and your sightreading, but it's written in the authors own language which in turn compiles to JavaScript and the headache to set up their toolchain is such that I haven't bothered fixing any of the bugs that I'm aware of (and there are plenty).

https://sightreading.training/

https://github.com/leafo/sightreading.training

It's written in a language called 'Moonscript':

https://github.com/leafo/moonscript

Which compiles to Lua. Which compiles to JS.

Madness. Nice madness, but still, it stopped me from being a contributor.

RE: the cost of switching at this point, what about languages that compile to Lua? Like https://moonscript.org/. That would let you keep the legacy code, no?

In the case of Lapis, it is actually written in Moonscript, which needs a few more things.

There's also some languages made to compile straight to Lua: - MoonScript is the most popular Lua wrapper - it's built to be more Python-like, featuring indentation-based scopes, function calls without parentheses, lambda syntax, list comprehension, and much more. - Yuescript is a modern update to MoonScript that adds more features (I haven't used it myself, so I'm not entirely sure exactly how it differs from MS). - Teal is a version of Lua that adds static typing for better code standards.

A programmer-friendly language that compiles to Lua.

This is a sample code for learning, written in Moonscript for TIC-80: