Roy: Small functional language that compiles to JavaScript

https://github.com/pufuwozu/roy

by DanielRibeiro • 14 years ago

91 32 14 years ago

github.com

gerggerg• 14 years ago

previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277027

not sure how much has changed since then.

pufuwozu6• 14 years ago

The thing that has gotten me the most excited since then has been an initial version of type-safe node.js modules:

http://brianmckenna.org/blog/roy_node_modules

bprater• 14 years ago

The page doesn't work hard to sell me on the idea.

pufuwozu6• 14 years ago

Welcome any ideas on how to make the README better. Better yet, I'll very happily accept pull requests ;)

epidemian• 14 years ago

I think the GitHub project page is fine for someone interested in the development and the technical side of the language. The fun is at http://roy.brianmckenna.org/ =D

silentOpen4• 14 years ago

This would be interesting if the meta-language weren't JavaScript. By choosing JS as the ML, you lose static typing and type inference in the compiler and severely restrict the target platforms and future growth and metaprogramming.

I would love to see a formal specification for the language mapping Roy's syntax to a subset of JS. It would also be nice if the primary implementation were written in OCaml or Haskell. Both of these languages now have very reliable ML->JS compilers and support algebraic data types allowing you to precisely model your object language.

pufuwozu6• 14 years ago

I would love to write Roy in a language with static typing (I'm definitely up for writing Roy in Roy).

But I think CoffeeScript has shown that in-browser compilation and execution is very useful. For example, if I wrote Roy in Haskell, I wouldn't have been able to easily write this demo site:

http://roy.brianmckenna.org/

It means you can play with Roy just by hitting a URL - low barrier to entry.

Another benefit is that you can include the Roy compiler in a page and use that to compile your Roy code - no pre-compilation necessary.

DannoHung• 14 years ago

Sure you could: Haskell can compile to Javascript :D https://github.com/pedromartins/ghcjs

silentOpen4• 14 years ago

http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/ http://try.ocamlpro.com/

I will actively contribute to your language implementation and use of these tools should you adopt them. With a proper type system, you can change the world. Without a proper type system, we will all suffer and kill ourselves by a thousand cuts.

If you have further doubts about the viability of this approach, see http://ashimagroup.net/demo/game/ooman/tutorial/ for a rigid body motion model in an OCaml WebGL game compiled to JS.

mhansen• 14 years ago

>> you lose static typing and type inference in the compiler

It doesn't matter what the target language is if you want to do static typing or type inference. For example, Haskell compiles down to assembly, but still has an extremely robust type system with inference and all.

>> severely restrict the target platforms and future growth

Are you serious? JavaScript is supported on every platform and is experiencing crazy growth.

silentOpen4• 14 years ago

You have also misunderstood my concerns. I am not making any statement regarding the choice of target or object or source language (JS, JS, Roy). I am am objecting to the choice of metalanguage (JS). Haskell compiles to assembly but is not written in assembly!

I am very serious. JavaScript is terrible for analysis and a huge waste on the server-side or mobile. Choosing JavaScript as the metalanguage for an implementation of an HM type system is strange. Why have an HM type system itself written in a type-unsafe way? Why artificially limit the analyzability of the language implementation which is pure and simply string(Roy) -> string(JS)? Roy looks like it has great potential and one of the reasons for that potential is its nascent type system. I want to take my pure Roy function library to ObjC, OCaml, C--, etc.

galenward• 14 years ago

I wouldn't consider it unless it compiled to coffee script first.

DanWaterworth• 14 years ago

Isn't there a js to coffee script compiler? You could compile from Roy -> js -> coffee script -> js if you really wanted to.

obilgic• 14 years ago

Someone shares this every other month

overgard• 14 years ago

All these languages compiling to javascript makes me think we really need a more low level language to compile to for the web. A C for the web, if you will (like how a lot of Lisp implementations will generate C to compile). Not necessarily byte-code per se, but something at a low enough level that provides enough guarantees that it can be compiled into something that performs well without the need for exotic jit compilers and so on. Javascript is not that language.

(Obviously C can't be that language for the web (NaCl possibly excluded), but when I say C, I mean in the general profile: extremely simple and maps very closely to what the hardware is actually doing)

evincarofautumn3• 14 years ago

Absolutely. I think a concatenative language would be great for this. It’d be easy to target for a wide variety of languages, statically typable if you like, amenable to analysis and optimisation, and much less inherently complex than JavaScript to parse and evaluate.

Moreover, it’d be trivial for browser authors to implement, so for a very low investment there could be a huge return. You can write a basic runtime for a full-featured concatenative language in a few hundred lines of C, and a compiler for it in a few dozen lines of Haskell.

roel_v• 14 years ago

'Ease of implementation' is a very low-ranking, I would almost say irrelevant, factor for the utility or uptake of a programming language. So what if there are only a couple of hundred lines of C, you'd still need tens of thousands at the least to provide a useful standard library.

beza1e1• 14 years ago

My hope is Dart.

http://www.dartlang.org/docs/technical-overview/index.html

jmitcheson• 14 years ago

In my opinion, it's a little too late. JavaScript is it. If you consider how Chrome runs some JavaScript as machine instructions then it isn't that far off from the situation you describe.

pufuwozu6• 14 years ago

I would love to see this. But there's two problems with it:

1. Bytecode formats are never completely language independent - there's always a feature or change that would make language X better

2. Browser vendors will never be able to agree on a bytecode format

So, to solve those problems, I've been thinking the following approach might work:

1. Write a JavaScript interpeter for a fairly language-independent bytecode

2. Write some small languages, targeting that bytecode (something for everyone: Haskell-like, C-like, Lisp-like, Forth-like, etc)

3. Hope people start writing more languages to target the bytecode

4. Hope that it's hard for browser vendors to ignore implementing the bytecode natively - for performance reasons

This way we avoid committees and just get it done. Let me know if you think this is a good or bad idea. I'm very willing to work on it.

tomp3• 14 years ago

count me in!

evincarofautumn3• 14 years ago

Agreed. This sounds plausible. Feel free to contact me by email if you need another developer—I’ll offer what time I can—or just a sounding board.

primecommenter• 14 years ago

I particularly like the example of Literate Roy: https://github.com/pufuwozu/roy/blob/master/examples/sqrt.lr.... This example demonstrates some of the language features and syntax: https://github.com/pufuwozu/roy/blob/master/examples/structu....

tzaman• 14 years ago

Why would I use this over coffeescript, that I'm already used to?

tkahn6• 14 years ago

Some programmers value type safety. That is the niche that Roy fills I believe. I'm certainly excited about it.

CoffeeScript is certainly a pleasure to work with but it lacks a type system and static type checking.

tomp3• 14 years ago

Also, Roy supports Algebraic DataTypes (ADTs) - i.e. pattern matching.

Though I think it takes quite some experience programming in Ocaml/ML/Haskell to fully appreciate its power.

Roy: Small functional language that compiles to JavaScript

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