Nothing Janky About This New Programming Language

thenewstack.io

11 points·droideqa··4 comments

From C++ to Clojure: Jank language promises best of both (259 points, 3 months ago, 103 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42871743

I quit my job to work on my programming language (58 points, 3 months ago, 32 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42658898

Jank development update – Moving to LLVM IR (190 points, 6 months ago, 49 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41845669

> [it] can be used anywhere C++ and Lua are used.

This is confusing, but maybe just poor paraphrasing. It should really just say that it can be used anywhere that Lua is used. The rest of the article describes Jank as "garbage collected" and "not a systems programming language", which obviously makes it so you can't run it anywhere C++ is used.

A bit disappointing, because I was looking forward to a more system-y Lisp-y language from that description.

There are lisps that compile to binary. What are their shortcomings to want more? CHICKEN Scheme is one I've read about that compiles as C.

When it said it could be used anywhere C++ could be used, I was expecting something closer to Carp[0] or PreScheme[1] which have no runtime garbage collector. This lets you use these in contexts where runtime GC is not acceptable, like real time processing, or constrained hardware like microcontrollers.

[0] https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp

[1] https://prescheme.org

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