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The Arturo Programming Language (arturo-lang.io)
57 points by yownv 1338 days ago
7 comments
arturo-lang 1337 days ago
I guess this posting caught me a bit unprepared! haha Thanks a lot for posting about Arturo in any case! This project is a love child of mine and any input/ideas/feedback is more than welcome obviously!

Feel free to follow the project or post any questions you may have on our "official" Discord channel: https://discord.gg/YdVK2CB

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yownv 1336 days ago
My pleasure ^_^.
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Supermancho 1337 days ago
Stylesheet on documentation is screwing up >= symbols under

; more comparisons

and in other places, in chrome.

The language is already so spatially dense/verbose, why use the full word "function" when fn would do?

Strange that sometimes expressions are in parens and other times sqbrackets:

    when? [>2] -> print "1 is greater than 2. what?!"
    when? [<0] -> print "1 is less than 0. nope..."
Some things make me do a double take, where consistent style will dictate one way to do something, but will be an endless hassle to watch out for the other:

    a: (2 > 3)["yes"]["no"]         ; a: "no"
    a: (2 > 3)? -> "yes" -> "no"    ; a: "no" (exactly the same as above)
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arturo-lang 1337 days ago
Thanks a lot for letting me know about the documentation website. There are some known issues but I've been putting them off until the upcoming update (which will coincide with the new release, which is coming very, very soon). Regarding parentheses vs square brackets, let me explain.

Basically, in Arturo, the two things are totally different:

- with parentheses, all you do is prioritize the evaluation of a given expression - now square brackets denote a block (of values) - one of the most basic building blocks of Arturo. And a block is not to be evaluated until we need it.

The case of `?` (which is an alias to the function `switch`) may look somewhat weird, but it follows Arturo's rules 100%. Have a look at the documentation: https://arturo-lang.io/documentation/library/core/switch/

Basically, the "normal", straightforward syntax would be:

``` a: switch 2 > 3 ["yes"]["no"] ```

Now, `-> "yes"` and `["yes"]` are exactly the same. All `->` does is wrap a single, computable value into a block (it's syntactic sugar, nothing more).

Now, why would we need parentheses in your example? (as you see, in mine, none was needed, as the order of evaluation is pretty much obvious)

if we did it without parentheses, given Arturo's right-to-left evaluation rule, it would mean something like: check if 3, if it's true, return "yes", otherwise return "no" and then compare that with 2. That's why we need the parentheses. But it's because `?` (switch alias) acts as an infix operator.

https://arturo-lang.io/documentation/language/#the-right-to-...

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h3rald 1337 days ago
Wow! Your web site changed a bit since last time I saw it, congratulations Yanis! It's great to see a programming language implemented in Nim to look so polished!
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arturo-lang 1337 days ago
Fabio, Hi! Really nice to see you around! And thanks a lot for your very kind words - I'm doing my best to find the time needed and do anything! Definitely, Arturo's is in my priority list! (Big update coming very soon!)

Also, don't think that I have forgotten about Min either. I do keep track of its progress as well! Well done to you as well! :)

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Art9681 1337 days ago
I am incredibly thrilled that this exists and incredibly dissapointed I didnt create it. I love everything about it and am eager to learn more about this project. I have been interested in Nim for quite some time and see this is built with it. It even has a net package in the standard library! I would love to see some benchmark comparisons to other languages like Go and Rust, just for fun.
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arturo-lang 1337 days ago
Thanks a lot for your kind words!! I really appreciate it and makes me keep working on the project.

Feel free to let me know in case you have any question - you are also welcome to post anything you may need in our Discord channel.

P.S. Regarding benchmarking, I can assure you I've been working non-stop on optimization so that the VM is as fast as possible. That being said, being an interpreted language, I don't think it could ever fare well against the compiled ones. I would mostly compare it to languages like Python, Ruby, Lua, etc :)

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luuuzeta 1337 days ago
Interesting to see another language that uses the `loop` keyword for C-based `for` loops. The only other I know of is Raku[0].

    loop(my $i; $i < 10; $i) {
        say $i
    }

    loop {
        # do something infinitely 
    }
[0]: https://docs.raku.org/syntax/loop
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draegtun 1337 days ago
Arturo was influenced by Rebol which comes with LOOP - http://www.rebol.com/r3/docs/functions/loop.html

However there are some differences...

  loop 10 [
      print "hello"   ;; prints "hello" 10 times
  ]

  repeat n 10 [
      print n         ;; prints 1 to 10
  ]

  forever [
     print "hello"    ;; print "hello" forever!
  ]
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arturo-lang 1337 days ago
Arturo has indeed been influenced by Rebol (and many other languages, to be honest).

As for looping...

    loop 1..10 'x -> print x                               ; prints 1 to 10

    loop.with:'i ["one" "two"] 'x -> print [i "=>" x]      ; 0 => one, 1 => two

    do.times: 10 -> print "hello"                          ; print "hello" 10 times

    loop.forever 1..10 'x -> print x                       ; prints 1 to 10, forever

    loop 1..10 [x y]-> print [x y]                         ; print 0 1, 2 3, 4 5,...
The same works for pretty much every function in the Iterators module: map, select, filter, etc :)

https://arturo-lang.io/documentation/library/iterators/

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akritid 1337 days ago
Ada https://www.adaic.org/learn/materials/intro/part4/
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manbart 1337 days ago
NetRexx uses it too

https://www.netrexx.org/Tutorial/nr_9.html

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arturo-lang 1337 days ago
Well, why not?! Since, after all, we all know them as "loops" ;-)
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mlajtos 1337 days ago
I like this a lot. One thing that I miss is the pipeline operator.
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arturo-lang 1337 days ago
Thanks a lot for your kind words!

Regarding pipes,... we are working on it! :)

https://arturo-lang.io/documentation/language/#pipe-operator

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herrherrmann 1337 days ago
Oh wow, I wonder what the Boolean value “maybe” is about! (It’s mentioned e.g. on the quickstart page.)
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Mathnerd314 1337 days ago
Testing in the playground: and? maybe true = maybe; and? maybe false = false; or? maybe false = maybe; or? maybe true = true; if maybe then "t" else "f" = "t".

So some kind of 3-valued logic with a conversion to true.

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ajuc 1337 days ago 

    if maybe then "t" else "f" = "t".
Wow, a very brave design decision :)
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arturo-lang 1337 days ago
It's three-value logic :)

https://discord.com/channels/765519132186640445/829324913097...

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xamolxix 1337 days ago
maybe "null", can't think of anything else.
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