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Comment by cyanregiment

8 hours ago

Clicked like 5 pages and never found 1 code example.

Idk why languages don't have their syntax in a sandbox front-and-center on the home page.

It's like a video game site with zero screenshots or videos (also rampant).

New programming languages I want 2 things:

1. What does the syntax look like

2. Why would I use this language

Talk about the proof logic, show the syntax, thank you

46 comments

cyanregiment

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Verdex  8 hours ago

To borrow your video game analogy. F* is the dwarf fortress of programming languages. Screenshots are only going to confuse anyone who isn't ready to take a significant mental journey.

  • redrobein  3 hours ago

    This is needless fearmongering. F* looks a lot like F# code with semantics you should be familiar with if you've worked with other proof oriented languages. The website design is dated is all. The book gives exactly what the OP wants in the introductory chapter.

rixed  7 hours ago

I'm the opposite: when landing in a programming language site I want to know the user case the authors had in mind, the memory model, the type system, the compilation targets, the data layout, the control structures, and only at the end just check that the syntax is not indentation based.

  • sroerick  7 hours ago

    So I'm very seriously considering making my language indentation based. You're saying you wouldn't like that?

    • Georgelemental  2 hours ago

      Indentation based is a pain when copy-pasting between contexts with different indentation levels, as you have to fix it up manually, which is error-prone. In languages without it, you can just auto-format. (And even in an editor that doesn't support that, having a second indicator makes it less error-prone to fix manually)

      2 replies →

    • rixed  6 hours ago

      No indeed I'm not a fan. I find it brittle and arbitrary for data values especially; that also makes automatic code generation and edition harder, for no good reason. But that's not an important consideration either way.

      2 replies →

    • mcluck  4 hours ago

      For what it's worth, I love the semantics of many indentation based languages (F# for example) but really dislike editing them. Visually scanning is much easier with braces (imo) and it's much easier to navigate braced languages when using a vim-like editor

      1 reply →

    • dunham  5 hours ago

      I don't mind indentation based languages. I used to hate them, but they've grown on me after using python, Haskell, Idris, Agda, etc. And I ended up making my own language indentation based (it is similar to Idris).

      That said, it is hard-mode:

      - You'll have to figure out how to parse it.

      - If you want editor support, it's a pain to get tree-sitter to handle it.

      - You may not be able to pull off editor operations like "rename" without implementing a pretty printer (a rename might affect indentation).

      I think it is helpful for crude error recovery. On parse error, my language will simply skip to the next column 0 token and parse another declaration.

      I did not do this (hindsight), but I would recommend arranging the grammar so you only get indented blocks in cases where the previous line ends in a keyword that introduces it. I think python has a trailing `:` every time indentation is introduced, and Elm does this too - in statements like `let` you need a newline after the `let` to get the multi-declaration version. (This addresses the rename issue.)

munchler  8 hours ago

https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/

  • _flux  7 hours ago

    I guess it's a bit popular right now

        * Error 17 at Welcome.fst(24,0-28,30):
      - Could not start SMT solver process.
      - Command: ‘/home/site/wwwroot/fstar/bin/z3’
      - Exception:
          Unix.Unix_error(Unix.ENOENT, "create_process", "/home/site/wwwroot/fstar/bin/z3")
    
    1 error was reported (see above)

  • aleph_minus_one  7 hours ago

    > https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/

    FYI: The link to this tutorial is unluckily a little bit obscured on the F* website: Go to

    > https://fstar-lang.org/index.html#learn (1)

    and click on the image below the text "You probably want to read it while trying out examples and exercises in your browser by clicking the image below.".

    In the section of (1) also the PDF version is linked:

    > https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/proof-oriented-programming-i...

    • cyanregiment  7 hours ago

      I still don't see any code examples!

      But I do see the editor to try it.

      I wonder why more languages don't have a few simple examples of: "HTTP server", "hello world", "todo list app" that you can just click and it shows the code for how you'd make it in that language.

      It matters a lot how the syntax looks IMO and seeing how, say, an API is scaffolded, helps understand a lot about the language in one glance

      Edit: Page 18 of the PDF. That's the first time I found what the code looks like, thanks for sharing!

      5 replies →

remywang  6 hours ago

That’s because syntax is the least interesting part of F*.

voodooEntity  5 hours ago

Thank you ! I just had the absolute same experience and was about to write a similar comment - take my upvote instead !