miniblog.

@cwebber@octodon.social Thanks. I completely understand: I'm super hesitant to critique in public. I think syntax pivots are incredibly hard. When I learnt coffeescript I occasionally had to look at the compiled JS to understand the syntax. Somehow the JS felt more 'real' (and wasn't whitespace sensitive). Small syntax changes are much easier: just give the user an autofix script for their programs.

@cwebber@octodon.social Interesting choice. So this will be the primary language, not some IR? I don't think I've seen any lisps pivot to non-paren syntax though. I can only think of Wisp and sweet-expressions (libraries with limited adoption AFAICT) and Dylan (a separate language made by lispers). What pivots did you have in mind?

@cwebber@octodon.social Yep, ever since I read 'Intel x86 considered harmful' I've been amazed by how many CPUs exist inside a modern computer. Any could have bugs. There have been some verification efforts for RISC-V, and the ISA seems to have a bright future, so I'm hopeful there. I hope it's economically viable though. I loved the OpenMoko project but it wasn't commercially successful. I understand that companies wanting strong guarantees do custom, verified, single-purpose hardware (e.g. with Galois).