visp

Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary

Visp is a toy-language built for a few purposes:

• I'd like to build a language from scratch
• I want to experiment with non-sexpr languages with metaprogramming support
• I want to implement vau-calculus
• I want to implement a language with lenses as the sole path management method
• If this works out, I'd like to switch to this language from Node.js

Why on earth would you want a half-baked pseudoscheme with f-expressions, which are evil?

🤷‍♀️

I'm unconvinced you need s-expression syntax to metaprogram, and I think macros are poor substitutions for f-expressions. I often want code to inspect other code when working with JS for documentation and versioning, which is easily done with vau-calculus. Being able to really define new syntax is a bonus too!

So far, I've implemented:

• a parser
• an evaluator
• a standard library (WiP)
• node library wrappers

It looks like this.

sym <- symbol("some js symbol")
val <- hash*(
  ("a" 1)
  ("b" 2)
  (sym hash*(
    ("c" 3)
    ("d" 4))))

accessor <- at-key(sym)

test <- $fn((x y)
  show("hello!")
  $define!(z, 3)
  sum*(x y z))

show(test(1 2))

show(lens-get(accessor val))

Standard Library

sum
sum*
product
product*
plus
minus
times
over