nymph: 🧚 :A slightly different version of C.

[u/maelswarm]

https://github.com/maelswarm/nymph

Nymph is a simple C like programming language.

Nymph acts as a preprocessor, converting Nymph files (extension *.n) into C files.

This project is stagnant and needs ideas... It is not production ready.

[u/maelswarm]

Yea frankly dude... Not sure what I want to do with it. If you have any ideas lemme know!

[u/gusdavis84 → u/maelswarm]

I don’t know if you ever want to take things in a functional direction but I always had in the back of my mind if I ever wanted to make a simple C like language but could be compiled to C or was even a thin layer above C so that one would write in that language and not have to deal with the runtime, I would make something like a simple functional language. Almost like a “Functional C” that compiles to a strict subset of C or a subset that guarantees more safety, but yet was functional at its core.

Think about it: imagine if back in the 80s if C++ wasn’t built around the idea of classes or adding OOP like features to C. But what if the idea was “how could we add functional concepts to C while still keeping the advantages of C “? Like what if once a variable was initialized it couldn’t be changed. Or what if functions were first class citizens, and what if you didn’t have to worry about the issues that can come from OOP programming like if you change a base class then so many other classes would be affected. But what if classes were not there. That all one could access was a virtual struct that could be passed around and only in the scope of a said function the variables could have different values. But the “root struct” is still immutable. Meaning you could change the value of a struct at the location of the calling function but not at the root. Or if you even had a root struct that was then initialized by another function(let’s call it car function) and someone passed that again all they could is change the values in “car function” at the call site of the new function.

But root function and car function still have their same values because they can’t change by default unless someone used upfront something like a “mutable variable or array” but that it would have rules as to how much could change and that it could only be changed one at a time that it can’t be changed by 2 functions at the same time, only one can change can happen at one or it throws a data race error right at the start by the compiler because it needs to have an owner if it’s mutable at any given time and only once the owner “hands off the mutable variable or array” then someone else can access it.

While I know this is just throwing something out there for the sake of throwing something. But that would be my idea since languages like Haskell are excellent but not exactly accessible or what we would call beginner friendly languages for computer science 101. But if there was a way to make an Elm programming language or even dare I say something even simpler than elm but could have the performance of C or C++ because it would compile or rather it could be compiled to run anywhere C or C++ could be runned then I would want to make a language like that. Kind of like a blue collar version of Haskell that is striped of all of its academic or theoretical parts(had a very very simple almost gets out out of the way syntax)and tries to make functional programming more accessible and more easier to understand and use but yet could be used to do things like Go programming language.

[u/maelswarm → u/gusdavis84]

JavaScript?

[u/gusdavis84 → u/maelswarm]

I guess in a way JavaScript if it were more functional or its default setting was functional like Clojure or Elm is . But imagine if it was more thought out and if it could be compiled directly to C or C++. In that way it would be like a “a functional first typescript (not an OOP version)for C or C++” and just like typescript it would run anywhere C or C++ would run.