[cyanregiment]

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

[kasumispencer2]

> Clicked like 5 pages and never found 1 code example.

But I clicked one (1) link to the online book and found a thousand?

[rixed]

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]

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

[rixed]

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.

[zlsa]

I think this falls under "[wanting] to know the user case the authors had in mind"

[BretonForearm]

There is no "user case", it's called use case.

[aleph_minus_one]

> There is no "user case", it's called use case.

Perhaps English is not a native language for zlsa?

[rustfreeforme]

That seems to be what he just said.

[Verdex]

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.

[munchler]

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

[_flux]

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]

> 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]

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!

[aleph_minus_one]

> 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.

Often the reason is that the value that the programming language brings is thinking very differently about how to write code - the examples how to write something in it are merely the "more boring" consequences of this different way of thinking.

--

If you want a programming language that "just" enables you to write something well-understood (in particular in the area of web development) like your suggested

> "HTTP server", "hello world", "todo list app"

in a perhaps just a little bit more elegant/concise way, just look at which web development language/framework is currently fashionable on HN.

[remywang]

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

[thomastjeffery]

Then why are we all so interested?

Examples provide more than syntax. It's the semantics that we care about most.

[aleph_minus_one]

> Examples provide more than syntax. It's the semantics that we care about most.

... and this semantics is explained in a quite encompassing way in the introductory notes "Proof-Oriented Programming in F*":

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

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

[rainyq]

just click the screenshot

[cyanregiment]

Takes you to an empty editor with still no code examples

[qzzi]

I clicked on 2 links on the main page in the Learn F* section...