I love this so much! It got me thinking about the future we’re heading towards, that took me down a rabbit hole.
As agents become the dominant code writers, the top concerns for a “working class” programming language would become reducing errors and improving clarity. I think that will lead to languages becoming more explicit and less fun for humans to write, but great for producing code that has a clear intent and can be easily modified without breaking. Rust in its rawest form with lifetimes and the rigmarole will IMO top the charts.
The big question that I still ponder over: will languages like Hoot have a place in the professional world? Or will they be relegated to hobbyists, who still hand-type code for the love of the craft. It could be the difference between having a kitchen gardening hobby vs modern farming…
behnamoh 27 minutes ago [-]
This is what JavaScript was supposed to be until Netscape forced the dude to use a C/Java-like syntax.
threemux 2 hours ago [-]
Very cool! Would this work with Cloudflare Workers potentially?
NeutralForest 3 hours ago [-]
It's such an amazing project, I wish it used something other than Guile but you can't have everything.
zelphirkalt 2 hours ago [-]
Guile has lots of libraries though, and is the language of Guix. This makes it more likely for people to package their stuff via Guix. Guix itself enriches the ecosystem, and Guile projects can use Guix to make them reproducible.
A few problems remain though. A good debugger, a good macro expander (geiser in Emacs is able to expand somehow), and solving the issues with R6RS library syntax and standard library bindings, are what comes to mind.
Racket's multi-core abilities for a long time were mostly heavy weight (places, starting whole new Racket VMs), except for their implementation of futures, but that one was not always useful. I think recently the situation in Racket has improved, but I don't know, whether it is as good as Guile fibers and futures (which are different from futures in Racket).
nerdponx 1 hours ago [-]
If Guile had more of the "batteries" from the Gauche standard library it might be the perfect all-purpose Scheme. But for just writing a simple application quickly and easily it's been impossible to beat Gauche for me, it's on par with Python and Ruby in that regard IMO.
NeutralForest 2 hours ago [-]
Aside from the debugging & testing I already mentioned, going only through guix is a tough sell considering the very tiny amount of people that use it. It's also incredibly slow and doesn't have many packages available. Even for Emacs, it has this weird way of going around Emacs-installed packages (GNU or MELPA channels). Just like Guile docs, it also doesn't tell you of a good way to do things, it only says "here is what exists" with too little guidance imo. It means people have to figure out how to setup things properly on top of all the rest. It makes for a terrible onboarding.
Zambyte 3 hours ago [-]
Other than Guile as in different Scheme implementations? It's usually not too difficult to port things between Schemes. Especially if you use standard R6RS or R7RS library syntax.
noosphr 3 hours ago [-]
Guiles debugging has been a nightmare in the 3.x series. Which is rather surprising since it was probably the easiest scheme to debug in the 1.x days.
It got so bad I moved to racket as my daily driver.
wwfn 3 hours ago [-]
Can you say more? Guile's the only scheme I've tried (attempts at packaging for Guix). Debugging has been difficult, but I figured it was me struggling with new tools and API. Does racket have better facilities for introspection or discovery at the REPL?
pjmlp 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, since years, all the way when it was still known as Dr. Scheme.
It has a graphical experience similar to the survivors from Lisp is Great days, like LispWorks and Allegro Common Lisp, or Clojure with Cursive.
pjmlp 2 hours ago [-]
Even better than PLT Scheme with Dr. Scheme, now Raket has ever been?
I have my doubts, given its age.
feastingonslop 3 hours ago [-]
Which LLM works best for Racket?
NeutralForest 3 hours ago [-]
A different scheme that has great debugging and testing and also better docs.
Rendered at 16:51:37 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
As agents become the dominant code writers, the top concerns for a “working class” programming language would become reducing errors and improving clarity. I think that will lead to languages becoming more explicit and less fun for humans to write, but great for producing code that has a clear intent and can be easily modified without breaking. Rust in its rawest form with lifetimes and the rigmarole will IMO top the charts.
The big question that I still ponder over: will languages like Hoot have a place in the professional world? Or will they be relegated to hobbyists, who still hand-type code for the love of the craft. It could be the difference between having a kitchen gardening hobby vs modern farming…
A few problems remain though. A good debugger, a good macro expander (geiser in Emacs is able to expand somehow), and solving the issues with R6RS library syntax and standard library bindings, are what comes to mind.
Racket's multi-core abilities for a long time were mostly heavy weight (places, starting whole new Racket VMs), except for their implementation of futures, but that one was not always useful. I think recently the situation in Racket has improved, but I don't know, whether it is as good as Guile fibers and futures (which are different from futures in Racket).
It got so bad I moved to racket as my daily driver.
It has a graphical experience similar to the survivors from Lisp is Great days, like LispWorks and Allegro Common Lisp, or Clojure with Cursive.
I have my doubts, given its age.