by samatman on 10/30/2022, 11:51:51 AM
by mananaysiempre on 10/30/2022, 12:25:05 PM
To clarify for others who only follow the link titles, this is not the Tcl-inspired scripting language LIL[1] nor the other Tcl-based, C-clothing-wearing scripting language Little[2].
[1] http://runtimeterror.com/tech/lil/
[2] https://www.little-lang.org/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26204218
by nerdponx on 10/30/2022, 12:34:57 PM
This looks like a really interesting set of language features. I do wonder why they decided to invent their own entirely new language though, instead of building on Tcl or Lua or a Basic dialect. Or even embedding Python. I can understand not wanting to use Scheme due to S-expressions being intimidating.
Did they consider them harder to learn in layers? Did they feel like some language features were lacking, or were unnecessary/undesirable? Were there problems with syntax that prevented Decker scripts from looking the way they wanted them to look?
by tuke on 10/30/2022, 2:25:28 PM
Nice. The embedded querying is neat.
I see the query language goes: `select ... from`
One thing I like about query languages that start with the "from" class is that then it's easier in REPLs to provide suggestions for what can be selected.
You type, say, `from people` and you can get a suggestion for `name`.
by tangentstorm on 10/30/2022, 10:22:48 PM
I've had the pleasure of alpha-testing several builds of lil and decker. It's nice to see that it's out in the wild now.
Some of the little applications I made in an hour or two each (with live help from the creator of Lil):
- a plotting program that tweens between two different plots when you move a slider
- a frame based traditional animation program
- a (color!) paint program with reflections for drawing little mandalas
It's actually quite a nice tool for rapidly prototyping all kinds of applications.
Also, I'm not sure if it's obvious from the given link, but there are implementations of both lil and decker in both C and JavaScript, so it's an incredibly portable little system!
by hoosieree on 10/30/2022, 9:33:09 PM
Wow, the GUI calculator demo in ~2 minutes is pretty impressive: https://beyondloom.com/decker/
by dang on 10/30/2022, 11:02:12 PM
Recent and related:
Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377964 - Oct 2022 (85 comments)
by zasdffaa on 10/30/2022, 12:28:35 PM
> Lil has a soft, spongy, dynamic type system in which values do their best to convert to a more relevant type as the need arises.
Noooooo, this is a terrible idea if you want this to be used at any non-trivial scale
The 'soft, spongy' type system is nice to see. That kind of strong dynamism is a good choice for the application: it will do the wrong thing sometimes, but will throw fewer show-stopping errors, which are really disheartening for casuals.
I do regard casting not-numbers to 0 as a flaw. I've had plenty of bugs where I wished `nil` would automatically cast to to `""` in string position, or the empty list/dict: but I have never, once, wanted a missing number to cast to 0.
The number zero doesn't have the "semantics of emptiness" in programming. It shouldn't be treated as false, either, unless we're dealing with a "raw" language, in which case, one should have to at least cast to boolean to get the truthiness of anything.
Personally, I would promote this to an error, because the other option, 'NaN', is itself a source of confusion. But at least NaN-poisoning the calculation will eventually inform the user that "htree" isn't a number.