Nova Programming Language

(nova-lang.net)

64 points | by surprisetalk 6 hours ago ago

33 comments

  • ajkjk 3 hours ago

    ahem, by law programming languages must have code samples on the front page

    • sema4hacker 3 hours ago

      Yes, after wandering through a few pages trying to find an example that actually did something, I gave up and moved on.

    • user2342 an hour ago

      It's there, but yes the home page is very confusing. I lost interest very fast.

    • picometer 3 hours ago

      The code block after "Welcome" is the code sample. Very literate.

      • graypegg 2 hours ago

        Is it meant to do something? It doesn't follow the same cause/effect syntax as the tutorial, and plopping that welcome block into https://playground.nova-lang.net/ doesn't seem to do anything. I assume it's the note taking part of the syntax?

        • casuallyblue 2 hours ago

          Its not necessarily meant to do anything on its own. The text there is the same cause/effect syntax, just with slightly different delimiters. If you were to include the fact it needs to execute for the rule to work on after the code, like: "|| - Welcome to Nova! -", then the rule would execute.

      • macintux 3 hours ago

        A caption for that sample, indicating it is one, would help.

  • ivanjermakov 4 hours ago

    Some code snippets here: https://nova-lang.net/introduction-to-nova/sight/

    EDIT: seems to be open source, just isn't mentioned on the website https://forge.nouveau.community/nova

  • geenat 3 hours ago

    I like the idea of a "markdown for logic", with transpiliation to lots of different easy backends such as javascript.

    Not convinced the language would actually be useful, but I like the ideas for portability.

  • BoiledCabbage 3 hours ago

    While I'm not clear on how it scales to more broader problems, it's nice to see a somewhat novel idea in programming languages vs the same rehash of algol derived languages.

    I do think I've seen something similar. A language mainly driven off of pattern matching, but I don't recall where. Does anyone know of prior art? Or is this completely novel?

    • MisterTea 3 hours ago

      Prolog comes to mind with its facts and rules matching.

    • shrubble 2 hours ago

      SNOBOL, SPITBOL and the Icon and Unicon languages are heavy with pattern matching.

      There’s a book on “Snobol for the Humanities” but it doesn’t have a strong focus on UI; everything at the time it was written used a simple terminal interface like a REPL with no advanced terminal handling.

      • jibal 2 hours ago

        I wrote some SNOBOL IV programs back in the day and met Ralph Griswold when he visited the UCLA Computer Club. Fun language with very interesting ideas. Looking into Unicon is on my list of things to do.

    • graypegg 2 hours ago

      June's (developer from the team page on Nova's site) personal website [0] points to this other interesting looking pattern-matching-based language she made called Modal [1] which seems to work on a tree rather than named LIFO stacks

      [0] https://june.codes/

      [1] https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/modal

    • ModernMech 12 minutes ago
  • escanda 4 hours ago

    I guess this sometime replace org-mode extensively. The idea is sound. The implementation looks good.

    For instance, I love org-mode export capabilities to standard formats such as pdfs and other kinds of documents. It makes it real easy to export some formulae or docs for some feature.

    Plus org-mode agenda is just superior and awesome.

  • oersted 3 hours ago

    Huh...

    In https://nova-lang.net/implementations/

    > Pyra: Runs on Lua

    > Serpens: Runs on Python

  • arniemiller 4 hours ago

    Nice. The learn page reminded me of https://learnxinyminutes.com/ which I really liked as a quick way to get a tour of a language.

  • LennyHenrysNuts an hour ago

    What's it for?

  • satiric 2 hours ago

    This feels like prolog, although I don't remember much about prolog apart from writing about 3 lines to get a CS degree. What puts this apart from prolog? (And are there, you know, reasons for using the language?)

    • yumaikas 2 hours ago

      (Nova dev here)

      Nova's execution model is a lot friendlier to implement vs Prolog, for one.

      One big reason reach for Nova are when I have something -very- state-machine shaped. It is quite good at that.

      I'll try to come back later with more explanations

  • 155231 2 hours ago

    iker

  • almosthere 4 hours ago

    Did you have 3 seconds to see that there is a Nova code editor out there? (edit: this comment is about name confusion)

    • airstrike 3 hours ago

      > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

    • gkbrk 3 hours ago

      Who would confuse a programming language and a text editor?

    • jibal 2 hours ago

      Even if that mattered, you could express it without being rude.

    • escanda 4 hours ago

      Most likely has a language server thus interoperable with most editors out there. Some config might be necessary though.

      • casuallyblue an hour ago

        No LSP yet, but we do have a tree-sitter grammar