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deprecated-coalton-prototype
Common Lisp2019–2021
stylewarning / deprecated-coalton-prototype · Archived

deprecated-coalton-prototype

Coalton is (supposed to be) a dialect of ML embedded in Common Lisp.

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Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
9Distinct people
13Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
206GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Coalton is (supposed to be) a dialect of ML embedded in Common Lisp.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month13 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2019-05-23 14:47:49 UTC to 2021-08-30 04:32:18 UTC.

01232019-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsMay 20192019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2019-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsJun 20202020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 2 submissions, 1 comments2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsAug 2021

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
May 20192019-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jun 20192019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-07-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jul 20192019-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20192019-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Sep 20192019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20192019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20192019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20192019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20202020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20202020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20202020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20202020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20202020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20202020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Aug 20202020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Sep 20202020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Oct 20202020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Nov 20202020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20202020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jan 20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20212021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC321
Mar 20212021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20212021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20212021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jun 20212021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20212021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20212021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

13 sources
bitmapper·Aug 30, 2021
I used to use CL quite a bit, but have since abandoned it for Haskell, so I'm a bit biased. There's a number of issues with that: - I'd be missing all the optimizations that can be performed due to purity. - There's more to Haskell's type system than just vanilla Hindley-Milner, and the implementation of it isn't particularly trivial. https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton is the closest thing and it's still missing a large amount of the type system. - Doing the implementation would be a significant amount of work to get it to integrate well with the language, and it would be a layer tightly glued on top instead of integrated with the language. I've seen many good DSLs embedded in lisp, but a type system is hard to embed in any language because it changes fundamental semantics of the language. Typed Racket is a massive project and it's
Read the rest
lacking things like ADTs. - A major part of Haskell is the standard library, a good chunk of the semantics of Haskell people use on a day to day basis, like monads and etc, are a part of the standard library.
In Hell Is Other REPLs
vindarel·May 6, 2021
This looks like something Common Lisp does better, however I have too little Clojure experience to compare. CL (and SBCL in particular) does "good enough" static type checks, it throws warning at compile time (when we compile one function with a keystroke). We can also precise our function types gradually. It isn't a HM type system (Coalton[1] could be it) but it's already great (compared to no compile-time types at all). Oh, about interactive development: that's sure, CL shines here. Objects get updated (lazily) after a class change, we can install Quicklisp libraries without restarting the image, etc. It's very smooth. 1: https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton
In Six years of professional Clojure development
vindarel·Feb 1, 2021
Everybody says Lisp is dynamic. OK but it's not Python. Don't forget that CL, and in particular the SBCL implementation, does pretty good compile-time type checking. Nice to note is that we get the warnings instantly because during development we can compile the function we are working on with a keystroke. Sure it is not a Hindley-Mindler type system (there's one in development: https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton/) but it is "good enough". BTW, Atom and VSCode have pretty good plugins this day (https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht...) and CL might have more libraries than you think (https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl). A lot is going one.
In Why I still Lisp
vindarel·Jul 18, 2020
It's a great article. Related, for Common Lisp: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/type.html and also: - https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/static-type-checking-in-t... (by an author of the CLASP implementation, C++ & LLVM for CL) - https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton - a library (pre-alpha): adding Hindley-Milner type checking to Common Lisp which allows for gradual adoption, in the same way Typed Racket or Hack allows for. It is as an embedded DSL in Lisp that resembles Standard ML or OCaml, but lets you seamlessly interoperate with non-statically-typed Lisp code (and vice versa).
In Typed Lisp, a Primer (2019)
reikonomusha·Aug 24, 2019
Hopefully nobody reading the article ends up disappointed knowing that the type checking presented is SBCL-only, working only for a subset of the Common Lisp type system (which itself is large and elaborate), with only informal guarantees of compile-time support, and doesn’t come close to allowing any sort of type checking with polymorphism or sum-types involved. None of those take away from the value SBCL’s type checking provides; the features presented do catch real bugs in real code, and I’d prefer those features are there than not there. If you are disappointed, however, then... Coalton [1] is a project that adds tried-and-true Hindley-Milner type checking to Common Lisp which allows for gradual adoption, in the same way Typed Racket or Hack allows for. You can think of Coalton as an embedded DSL in Lisp that resembles Standard ML or
Read the rest
OCaml, but lets you seamlessly interoperate with non-statically-typed Lisp code (and vice versa). It’s really intended as a practical tool to allow parts or most of your codebase to be statically typed, without compromising the dynamic and interactive nature of Common Lisp. On top of it all you get all of the facilities of Lisp, like macros, compile-time evaluation, etc. Coalton code is truly Lisp code, it’s just—at the end of the day—extra syntax to allow a type checker (also Lisp!) to run. As a benefit, it allows quasi-trivial porting of ML-like code to Lisp. Almost all ML construct has a direct correspondence in Coalton. It’s still a work in progress, especially in terms of polish and documentation, but it works. Shen [2] is another interesting project, but I didn’t generally find it very compatible with the ML style of program construction, and it seemed to have goals diverging from being an extension of Lisp, into being some hyper-portable independent language. [1] https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton [2] http://www.shenlanguage.org/
In Static Type Checking in Common Lisp
vindarel·May 23, 2019
I'd pitch: - it's all interactive and that's a productivity boost. Write a function, compile it (yes, compile function by function), see warnings or get a debugger on errors, try it right away. Same for web development. No process has to restart to test your changes. - build a self-contained executable: a joy to deploy. - strong typing, catches many common errors (and coming: an ML extension for CL: https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton, already used in a large Rigetti codebase) - stable. - fast - take in every language feature you want with libraries - parenthesis: they help to edit code by structure, by semantic units, instead of by line or characters. - most flexible language. Like Python's decorators or context managers ? Yet they're limited and have their idiosyncrasies. - unmatched object system, with generic functions that help m
Read the rest
aintain your logic small. And there are libraries :] https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl
In The Common Lisp Cookbook

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