docs VS imba

The interesting semantic relationships are those that let the machine automatically deduce optimizations

> I also like the idea of modifying function definitions at runtime. I have these visions/nightmares of programs that take other programs as input and then let me run experiments on how the program behaves under certain changes to the source code. I want to write metaprograms dammit

Lotta metaprogramming in Joy. Many functions work by building new functions and running them, it's a natural idiom in Joy.

- - - -

> A language designed around having first-class GUI support

Red? ( https://www.red-lang.org/ )

> Visual Interface Dialect ... is a dialect of Red, providing the simplest possible way to specify graphic components with their properties, layouts and even event handlers. VID code is compiled at runtime to a tree of faces suitable for displaying.

https://github.com/red/docs/blob/master/en/gui.adoc

> You can’t work with strings, json, sets, or hash maps very well, date manipulation is terrible, you can barely do combinatorics problems, etc etc etc. I want a language that’s terse for everything.

That also sounds like Red.

> They are well funded.

Rebol Technologies went bankrupt, and Rebol is de-facto dead since more than a decade; Red barely manages to get by thanks to a recent crypto spike.

> I would say the languages are very different in the sense that Beads is clearly aimed at graphical interactive software.

So is Red with it's native GUI engine. [1]

> They are so different that it is hard to compare.

Both share the same goal of replacing modern software practices with biased, batteries-included toolchain, varying only in implementation.

> Red being a concatenative language has more in common with FORTH than Algol.

Red is not concatenative in any sense of the word, nor any other language in Rebol family that I know of.

[1]: https://github.com/red/docs/blob/master/en/view.adoc

> What if a simpler programming language had first-class representations of a lot more than strings and arrays?

Red lang?

> Where most languages have 6-8 base datatypes, Red has almost 50.

https://github.com/red/docs/blob/master/en/datatypes.adoc

Imba. The best web programming language ever made.

https://imba.io/

I agree. I was looking for the same thing.

They’re not easy to create but side by side code/result demos like the ones I saw on https://imba.io/ make it very clear on what I’ll be getting into as a developer.

You might get away with Svelte (not Sveltekit) here since it compiles down to javascript. Another fun framework to try out for this might be https://imba.io/, which also has an option to compile things down to pure HTML, CSS & JS (plus it’s very fun to work with).

I've been using Svelte exclusively for the past 3 years or so. I love it and will keep using it as my main solution for interactivity. It's fast to use and execute, produces small apps, and it's extremely economical in how you express components.

The confusion the author expresses with $: reactive statements and store auto subscription with the $ are unwarranted IMO. It's really just a lack of familiarity but this kind of stuff becomes intuitive very quickly.

My criticism of Svelte is rather that they haven't gone deep enough into the compiler-based approach.

Would be great if there were something like .svelteStore files where you had all the automatic reactivity tracking without having to use a component. Or some kind of improvements into writing styles. With a compiler you can do anything you want and I think Svelte has been a bit timid, maybe to not scare people away.

For example Imba[1] also bet on a compiler-based approach (years before Svelte existed) and created their own language/framework/compiler. They have come up with amazing solutions to many problems. It's a shame they bet on Ruby aesthetics though and also that they aren't investing into marketing/docs.

Of course, one might argue that using a compiler is a bad idea for a number of reasons. And yeah of course there are objective issues to any approach, but you have to pick your poison. All in all, Svelte has made me tremendously productive compared to using other solutions for years (React, Vue, Mithril, Inferno, etc).

I will say though that I would rather use a solution that doesn't have any reactivity at all. Mithril and Imba have this concept of just "redrawing the whole thing" like a game GUI without having to worry about reactivity. Cognitively speaking, no reactivity is the best mental model IMO. With any reactive solution, it's very easy to fall into complex reactive dependencies which can be hard to track. The author of Imba has a video from 2018 where he talks about this[2].

[1] https://imba.io/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwoApTLvRdQ

A code snippet showing a simple program right on the home page and "selling" whatever features makes it special would go a long way. It's quite off-putting to have to delve deep into a guide in order to get a feel for a language.

Some examples done right:

https://lfe.io

https://elixir-lang.org

https://imba.io

https://ocaml.org

At the same time, my heart is kind of in the web stuff and I find it a lot more exciting personally so it's hard for me to leave. You can do so much more with web tech and all the new ideas Tcoming from it and the pace it's developing is really . I just don't understand why React is becoming the standard when it's a complete nightmare compared to where we should be. I mean, this is literally insane, especially when things like Svelte exist - or even better, Imba. The day Imba becomes the standard is the day I love web dev again.