by karmakaze on 11/30/2022, 11:00:45 AM
F#/OCaml may not have a small total surface area (I'm not that deep in it), but you can do a whole lot knowing basic constructions.
If you haven't used a functional language there's an alternative approach without the cognitive overhead of thinking about statements executing in time (most of the time). For a non-static typed example, Elixir (but that usually also brings in Phoenix framework). Zig is another interesting one for different reasons.
by hazelnut-tree on 11/17/2022, 7:42:57 PM
There are not many languages (in active use) with a small surface area. Go is small, Lua is another. However, a small language does not always mean simple - you may still encounter code that is difficult to unravel.
New programming languages tend to range from medium-to-large in size.
Here are number of keywords in some languages. Note: this is a bit of a blunt measure of a language's size so you may not consider it a measure of small surface area:
- Lua (21 keywords)
- Go (25 keywords)
- Julia (30+ keywords)
- Python (30+ keywords)
- Javascript (30+ keywords)
- Ruby (40+ keywords)
- Crystal (50+ keywords)
- Rust (50+ keywords)
- Nim (60+ keywords)
- C# (70+ keywords)
- PHP (70+ keywords)
Languages still in development
- Odin (30+ keywords)
- V lang (40+ keywords)
- Zig (40+ keywords)
by Qem on 11/18/2022, 1:18:03 PM
In terms of surface area, I think is hard to beat languages in the Smalltalk family. Smalltalk has only six reserved words: true , false , nil , self , super and thisContext. To emphasize the simplicity, there is even a smalltalk postcard to show the whole syntax fits on it. See https://richardeng.medium.com/syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fa...
I think this postcard remark may be a bit misleading sometimes, as in practice the complexity is shifted from syntax to the large class library in the system image, that packs a lot of functionality. But yet the environment is sweet and has great discoverability, with functionality like search by example. See https://youtu.be/HOuZyOKa91o
The Smalltalk flavor I strongly recommend is Pharo. There's a MOOC[1] on it, and there are several free books that cover the basics of the language itself[2][3], data visualisation[4] and numeric stuff[5]. [1]. https://mooc.pharo.org/ [2]. https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/PharoByExample9/r... [3]. https://books.pharo.org/deep-into-pharo/ [4]. http://agilevisualization.com/ [5]. https://books.pharo.org/numerical-methods/
by tionate on 11/18/2022, 7:49:04 AM
Clojure is tiny in that there are very few special forms (less than 20 according to [0]) and most things are just plain functions.
More importantly, it is developed extremely conservatively which means
1) you don’t need to learn the syntax/feature of the month (like eg javascript/python)
2) the code you wrote a decade ago will still work.
That said, it does sit on top of Java/JS so you can access those parts easily if you need to.
by Jtsummers on 11/17/2022, 5:26:10 PM
Forth, Lua (with LuaJIT pretty quick), Scheme, Pascal, probably a lot more.
by tored on 11/18/2022, 11:57:07 AM
There are many BASIC dialects with a small surface area. The one I use is PureBasic, however it is commercial.
by aristofun on 11/17/2022, 6:07:46 PM
Ruby, Typescript
by huqedato on 11/20/2022, 1:06:47 AM
Elixir.
I tried hard to like Go, but as of now, I just don't like it. What languages would you recommend that I check out? I already know Python and C, and I would like to learn something more performant than Python.