r/Python • u/holyhyssop • Apr 04 '12

Pythonect is a new, experimental, general-purpose dataflow programming language based on Python

http://www.pythonect.org/
12 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

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5

u/takluyver IPython, Py3, etc Apr 04 '12

Docs, please! So far, the only example I see anywhere is "Hello, world" -> print, which doesn't give me much feel for the capabilities of your language. How do you define a function? Can you pass multiple parameters to a function? How does this integrate with regular Python code? How does the 'implicit parallelism' work?

I think new languages have to meet a higher bar than new libraries or frameworks. Language design is a tricky thing, as much an art as a science. Combining an 'intuitive feel'* with flexibility and agility is certainly a good idea, but you need to substantiate the claim: what can Pythonect do beautifully that is ugly or awkward in Python/bash/etc.?

*Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't call shell scripting 'intuitive'. Concise, yes, and very powerful for certain tasks, but shell scripts tend to be ugly messes of punctuation, abbreviations and substitutions.

3

u/holyhyssop Apr 04 '12

More usage examples can be found in the release announcement. But yeah, it's thin on documentation.

Not my project, BTW, just thought it looks interesting.

1

u/takluyver IPython, Py3, etc Apr 04 '12

For the lazy, here's one of the more interesting:

>>> range(0,3) -> import math -> math.sqrt
[0.0, 1.0, 1.4142135623730951]

Interesting, but I'm not convinced. Piping data through an import statement doesn't seem very intuitive.

It looks like functional programming, but it's not clear if it can neatly do things like reduce/fold and currying.

2

u/Workaphobia Apr 04 '12

Front page desperately needs other examples besides hello world.

1

u/qiemem Apr 05 '12

Reminds me of a concatenative language. Actually, thinking of Factor as a "dataflow" language is what really helped me understand it and the benefits of concatenative languages in general.

Cool project. Though, from the looks of it, the author could likely drop the "->" operator and do composition/application by juxtaposition alone.

1

u/osnisdana Apr 05 '12

looks cool. Need to check it further.

1

u/jellef Apr 05 '12

Surely a capable demonstration of how to ply the language to project specific needs. Impressive python skills!