fur

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Observed mentions: 2017-12-02 19:29:27 UTC to 2024-01-20 15:19:25 UTC.

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Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Comments
2017	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1
2018	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2019	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1
2024	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1

What Hacker News says

4 sources

kerkeslager·Jan 20, 2024

I found this Rust tutorial[1] on Pratt parsers to be really easy to follow as well. I'm not a Rustacean but I didn't find not knowing Rust to be a barrier. I used that as a guide to write the parser for my experimental programming language Fur[2]. However, I'll caution anyone writing their own programming languages to read some wisdom from someone who has written a production-quality programming language[3]. Most programming language developers get bogged down in writing the parser and never even get into solving the real hard problems of language development, which are things like bytecode generation and garbage collection. The fact is, a naive recursive descent parser with some low lookahead number to handle left recursion will be performant and can be written in an afternoon for 99% of parsable languages. I'm not sure what it is about

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parsers that makes them susceptible to yak shaving, but it seems to be a trap a lot of people fall into (including myself!). [1] https://matklad.github.io/2020/04/13/simple-but-powerful-pra... [2] https://github.com/kerkeslager/fur/blob/main/parser.c [3] https://craftinginterpreters.com/compiling-expressions.html#...

In Pratt Parsers: Expression Parsing Made Easy (2011)

kerkeslager·Oct 5, 2023

One might equally say that the embracing of reflection in Java and C# pretty much solidifies the case against static typing for complicated projects. I'd tend to think the important feature here is strong typing, not static typing, and indeed TypeScript, which is hampered by the anemic type system of its parent JavaScript, it not the best example of strong typing. Ultimately, strong typing is a hill I'm willing to die on, too. But a lot of people making arguments on this topic are conflating it with static typing, which just isn't the same thing. In general, that gives me the impression you haven't done enough work in enough different languages to really have an informed opinion. The type systems of different languages work within the context of the language as a whole, with tools like REPLs, test frameworks, constraint checkers, static a

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nalyzers, and IDEs carrying a lot of the work that might be attributed to a type system. There are a lot of confounding factors here, and if you're only talking about a few languages and you are making mistakes like conflating static=strong and dynamic=weak, you don't have the breadth of experience to understand what the benefits and downsides of strong types are. Though uncommon, strong dynamic type systems do exist. Scheme is probably the most popular example, although its type system isn't the strongest. This is the approach I'm taking with Fur[1], which attempts to have as strong a type system as possible while still being dynamic. Python is... stronger than many other popular languages (i.e. JavaScript), but still does a lot of coercion (particularly around truth-y/false-y values--duck typing is a bit of a grey area in that it's sort of arguably weak typing, but also arguably indicates a capable type system rather than a weak type system). But perhaps more critically, weak static type systems also exist, such as C, which is the source of many of the world's most serious bugs. It's highly unwise to assume that static typing is strong typing. [1] https://github.com/kerkeslager/fur

In Strong static typing, a hill I'm willing to die on

anon9001·Sep 12, 2019

I stalked you a little based on that comment, and I can't figure out what it is you really do. You must be living a good life if you've got time to maintain a toy programming language (https://github.com/kerkeslager/fur), and you must be able to pick your work carefully if you're so passionate about GPL, which I can respect. But how do you make money? And how did you get started? I'd be concerned about losing health insurance or draining savings while losing the opportunity cost of employment. How sure were you that your plan would work before you took the leap?

In Ask HN: Are you ok?

kerkeslager·Dec 2, 2017

Yet another approach which I have used in Fur (https://github.com/kerkeslager/fur) is to compile to a low(er)-level programming language (in the case of Fur, I'm compiling to C). These approaches aren't just for toy languages. Java/C#/Python standard implementations compile to byte code that runs on virtual machines. Glasgow Haskell Compiler compiles to C--, and a bunch of languages compile to JavaScript.

In Writing a C Compiler, Part 1