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Comment by upghost | Hacker News Reader

Curious what the story is for slotting Jank into gaming. Seems like a fit for Unreal, but I really love the Component-Based-Architecture of Unity. Would you get it into your Unity project the same was as getting normal C++ into your project?

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jank can embed into any native program like lua would. But it the offers seamless interop back into C++, including the ability to instantiate new templates. So, anywhere lua is being embedded, jank could be used while providing a tighter integration to C++, interactive dev with a REPL, and proper lisp macros.

A good alternative for game engines where Lua has literally already been embedded is to use Fennel, a LISP that borrows some Clojure-like syntax and that compiles to Lua-code. In some cases it should be possible, like for Löve 2D, to include a few lines of boilerplate Lua code to load Fennel-files on the fly. Elsewhere you probably have to pre-compile to Lua.

https://fennel-lang.org/

Fennel is fucking dope, I love it. It feels Clojuresque, yet, it still is more like "Lispy Lua" than Clojure. I don't know enough about compilers and building a language, but to me it feels like the design of Fennel was more accidental and the main goal was to sustain "virtually zero overhead" to run on Lua, not to bring the best ideas from Clojure.

Jeaye, in contrast, seems to be taking a more deliberate approach in designing the language, not only taking the best ideas from Clojure but also trying to improve upon them.

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