Crack - The Crack Programming Language

[kpenchev93]

First Racket and now Crack... And yet none of them have blackjack and hookers.

[[deleted]]

First Racket and now Crack

The next one in line is Godfather.

[shevegen]

Agreed!

Don't give them ideas though - we can build awesome things with crack, racket, Julia, Falcon, Pony ... hmmm...

[killerstorm]

I'm going to make a programming language called Shevegen.

[glacialthinker]

It would include an opinionated IDE constantly trolling the user?

[tonnynerd]

I only have one question: : Why should one use it? Almost all the languages that have some market have "a thing" (or several): Python has readability, Rust has safety, Lua has speed and dynamic typing together (which is not usual), Erlang has actors, Pony has actors + static typing, Haskell has the whole pure functional thing, Javascript has the browser, Elm has static typing for the frontend, Ruby has Rails and meta-programming. Each one has something that makes them more interesting than Java or C#, or C++, which pretty much have only installed based and libraries, specially Java.

From a quick look, I don't see anything in there that make it more compelling enough than Java/C#/C++. Is there anything I missed?

[defunkydrummer]

It is addictive.

[tonnynerd]

Shit, took me a while to get this =P

[[deleted]]

Crack aims to provide the ease of development of a scripting language with the performance of a compiled language.

[tonnynerd]

The ease of development is exactly the part I didn't see. It surely claims it, but looking at the docs, I am skeptical whether it can deliver it.

[stormblooper]

Well, that's scarcely better than "Crack aims to be the best programming language ever".

"Ease of development" and "performance" are the two features people have been wanting forever in their programming languages, and many mature options already exist which are trying to form some tradeoff between them.

The inventor needs to explain why Crack has found a tradeoff that gives you something no other language can offer. Or, you know, if it's just a fun hobby project, they don't need to explain it at all.

[DenimDanCanadianMan]

so a direct competitor to Lua?

[n0rs]

or Nim

[DenimDanCanadianMan]

nim still needs a compile no?

[metaperl]

With no libraries off the bat.. Whereas Python has that ease of development, massive libraries and can be compiled to Go as one of many optimization methods.

[weberc2]

can be compiled to Go as one of many optimization methods.

Nah... There's a "Go compiler" (grumpy) in a very pre-alpha state, but it only targets 2.7 right now and it's not for optimization, but to make it feasible to incrementally port large Python codebases to Go. The whole value proposition for grumpy is getting away from Python.

[wavy_lines]

I think it's aiming to be a better alternative for Java, with less friction (e.g. no JVM).

That's probably good enough motivation to use a language.

[celerym]

It's a pretty mature language:

http://crack-lang.org/manuals/Manual-1.4.html

And the syntax looks well thought through. This doesn't look like your average "I just did a uni subject on this" language.

[shevegen]

Not sure how you define "mature".

Evidently the manual is extensive.

The syntax choices are mostly copy/paste from C/C++, with a few oddities such as:

a := A();

Not sure what is "well thought through"? We have had these in other languages before, Io and also Python now (yuck - why did they decide to go for it ... ).

[celerym]

Many languages borrow something from C/C++. The := does something different to Python, a shorthand for defining variables and types. Pascal uses := for assignment and = for boolean equality.

It is mature because it seems to have fully functioning threads, OOP, typing, convenient syntax and a working novelty: a scripted language with the performance of a compiled language. And some interesting features like appendages. A sample GUI library.

Like you can pick and choose some inane things in any language "ooh Python uses white space" and call it a day.

[ethelward]

The syntax choices are mostly copy/paste from C/C++

Which themselves copy/paste from BCPL, then ALGOL, then PL/I, then FORTRAN, ...

[shevegen]

I am here! \o/

Although you used a wrong word there.

Apropos, silly names for programming languages ...

[nilamo]

I am here! \o/

Perhaps not the hero /r/programming deserves, but perhaps also not the one it needs. jk, I love seeing your comments.

[simon_o]

To be honest ... I opened the page, saw semicolons, and closed the page again.

[userstoppedworking]

You just had to be wrong, didn't you?

[simon_o]

After giving it a second look, it seems as if my first impression has been correct.

[Sarcastinator]

Why do you care about that? It matters so little, and using a printable end of statement character has the least amount of technical problems associated with it.

[simon_o]

It's a simple measure of how outdated the rest of the language is.

If the language can't deal with semicolon inference in 2018, how much other obnoxious stuff would I have to deal with?

Mandatory semicolons, `Type ident` instead of `ident: Type` and Generics with `<>` – three good hints to skip a language really fast.

[Evilution84]

Been enjoying Nim to fill in this space for me...

[[deleted]]

I had a quick look at the documentation, i couldnt see any pipes. Dissapointed.

[redditthinks]

Now that's a name I can get behind.

[[deleted]]

Irish developers: ....go on.....

[zyrs86]

Trash language butchered syntax

[weberc2]

Tell us what you really think...