wat-compiler VS reason

For some time I've been fascinated by the codebase of a small WAT compiler written in JavaScript.

https://github.com/stagas/wat-compiler/blob/main/story.txt

And I mean "small" as a real complement to how readable the entire compiler is. It's also been a great way to appreciate the design of the WASM text format and WASM overall. It's not a Lisp but has a similar feel to it.

I've been meaning to get more fluent at writing WAT directly, not for any practical purpose but just for pleasure of it. I could see myself gradually building up some abstractions to help me deveolp larger programs, perhaps a slightly higher-level language.

I was also disappointed that this isn't included in the browsers given that it was designed to be very simple to parse and compile. So I tried as an exercise to build such a compiler[0] and indeed it was much easier than I expected (with a few shortcuts of course, being a POC). It is just 5kb gzipped and it compiles to binary most of the WAT code out there and also quite fast, just a few ms. That said, I think writing WAT by hand is only helpful for very small critical hot code, anything more complex and IMO you need an abstraction of some sort.

[0]: https://github.com/stagas/wel

Hey HN, at Ahrefs we have been working on an online book that hopefully helps React developers get up and running with Melange, an OCaml to JavaScript compiler. You can read more about Melange here: https://melange.re/.

There are still a few chapters that we'd like to add before considering it "complete", but it might be already helpful for some folks out there, that's why we decided to publish it early.

The book uses Reason syntax to implement React components using ReasonReact components. You can read more about both in:

https://reasonml.github.io/

ReScript is "Fast, Simple, Fully Typed JavaScript from the Future". What that means is that ReScript has a lightning fast compiler, an easy to learn JS like syntax, strong static types, with amazing features like pattern matching and variant types. Until 2020 it was called "BuckleScript" and is closely related to ReasonML.

This tracks with how I've seen "normal" languages converge on similar, flawed imitations of better type systems through tools and repurposed syntax. Thank you for confirming.

Do you have any recommendations or warnings regarding general languages which reach in the opposite direction? Reason[1] and F#[2] are both examples: they attach pre-existing ecosystems and compile-for-$PLATFORM tools to OCaml-like typing.

OCaml itself is also intriguing for personal projects. However, I'm worried the "GPL" in its standard library's LGPL license might scare people despite both the linking exception and Jane Street's MIT alternative.

1. https://reasonml.github.io/

ReasonML purely as a syntax layer on top of OCaml is still being updated and released[1]. Incidentally, I'm one of the maintainers of that project too :-)

With this Melange release, we're hoping to somewhat revive ReasonML and channel some folks back to the community from the perspective of a vertically integrated platform that has seen major investment in the past few years.

[1]: https://github.com/reasonml/reason

Why not use https://reasonml.github.io/ instead? Or just use Typescript?

Quieted down, but I depend on projects with worst graphs:

https://github.com/reasonml/reason/graphs/contributors

There is also reasonml for Web development.