Caramel

Languages and libraries

programming language

SHOW HN2015

130points
22comments
#168of 2,565 in 2015
Top 7%of 2015 by points

How HN took it

CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments

4 positive, 8 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 1 critical, out of 13 comments about the project. Thread score +0.11.

Idea: 3 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Makes the lambda calculus more accessible and readable.

    From 2 comments
    • This is a neat project which makes the λ-calculus more accessible. The λ-calculus is incredibly useful for designing and analyzing language features, but it can be a bit of a…
      tikhonj on HN
    • You'd rarely want to write lambda calculus directly for practical purposes, although Caramel looks like a very nice shorthand. But it's the fundamental basis of what functional…
      readymade on HN
  • Good platform for playing with language design.

    From 2 comments
    • This is a neat project which makes the λ-calculus more accessible. The λ-calculus is incredibly useful for designing and analyzing language features, but it can be a bit of a…
      tikhonj on HN
    • It's mostly a theoretical tool: it's an incredibly simple programming language, which makes it easy to design and evaluate language features in isolation. That's a powerful…
      tikhonj on HN

Objections

  • Unclear why an ADT-style type system is needed when types are just predicates.

    From 2 comments
    • I don't think I understand the reasoning behind the ADT. Isn't a 'type' just a set of predicates applied to arguments at compile time and/or at runtime? Why not just define a…
      javajosh on HN
    • Cool, thanks for the explanation. I guess I'm a little confused by the desire to "derive many functions on different data-structures automatically". What's the independant…
      javajosh on HN

Requests

  • Compile to Binary Lambda Calculus (blc).

    From 1 comment
    • Would love to see this compile to blc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_lambda_calculus
      murbard2 on HN
  • An online version of the interpreter.

    From 1 comment
    • This is a neat project which makes the λ-calculus more accessible. The λ-calculus is incredibly useful for designing and analyzing language features, but it can be a bit of a…
      tikhonj on HN

Questions

  • Will the Caramel compiler be bootstrapped?

    From 1 comment
  • What practical applications does the lambda calculus have?

    From 1 comment
    • Had never heard of the lambda calculus before. Very cool. Does it have any practical applications? Or is it mostly a theoretical / conceptual tool?
      mgalka on HN

Alternatives named

  • trylambda

    From 1 comment
    • This is a neat project which makes the λ-calculus more accessible. The λ-calculus is incredibly useful for designing and analyzing language features, but it can be a bit of a…
      tikhonj on HN
  • Haskell and Scheme

    From 1 comment
    • It's mostly a theoretical tool: it's an incredibly simple programming language, which makes it easy to design and evaluate language features in isolation. That's a powerful…
      tikhonj on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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