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SuperFola, superfola@programming.dev
Instance: programming.dev
Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 14
Comments: 25
ArkScript lang developer, split keyboard fanatic
Posts and Comments by SuperFola, superfola@programming.dev
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SuperFola
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c/roguelikedevComments by SuperFola, superfola@programming.dev
Hi there (a bit late, my bad) ; I've composed a short blog post about the language, comparing it with Clojure and Common Lisp: https://arkscript-lang.dev/blog/comparison-with-other-lisps/
I find this paper false/misleading. They just translated one algorithm in many languages, without using the language constructs or specificities to make the algorithm decent performant wise.
Also it doesn’t mean anything, as you aren’t just running your code. You are compiling/transpiling it, testing it, deploying it… and all those operations consume even more energy.
I’d argue that C/C++ projects use the most energy in term of testing due to the quantity of bugs it can present, and the amount of CPU time needed just to compile your 10-20k lines program. Just my 2 cents
Thanks for the idea, I’ll try to add a comparison page soon!
The vertical alignement is now fixed, I got lucky with bootstrap ; it looks way nicer, thanks!
Technology« America, fuck yeah » takes a whole new meaning
Also, just to check, do you have a time limit set for the Playground so that people do not over-tax your system?
I double-checked, and it seems my timeout command was incorrect. I set it up again (with additional testing), and it now properly kills the container(s) after 20 seconds.
Thanks for your comment!
That’s a tough question, because it often boils down to preferences. I think a beginner developer or even someone fed up with the complexity of modern languages could be interested in the language, as it is very small but still more than usable. Only 9 keywords, no hidden meaning, everything follows the same rules : open a paren, then the first thing is a function call, the rest are arguments.
I think the « lisps have too many parentheses » is a false problem only used by trolls. I won’t say that you have to understand the flow or fall into the matrix to use it and avoid the parens, it’s more about having a consistent coding style so that you don’t have to care about the closing parentheses. Plus with a modern editor, parentheses groups have different colors and are easy to match, you can navigate to the starting / closing paren with a keybind (% in vim, command/ctrl M in jetbrains IDE).
I’m no frontend dev, so I battle a lot with it so it displays how I want ; I tried with flex to center vertically the « getting started » section, will have to try again.
Yes, there is a time, cpu and memory limit to the playground, no worries! I started the playground about a year ago but only just recently managed to compile to wasm, I’ll see in the future if I can swap the docker integration for it.
First of all, the language is lisp inspired. ArkScript has s-expressions and code as data via its macros, its reads the same (left to right, prefix notation).
Keywords wise, we are not the same, which is a small but striking difference when comparing them side by side.
ArkScript has no classes nor structures, and no quoting/quasiquoting.
AFAICT both ArkScript and Common Lisp (a big lisp contender) have lexical scoping, so no real difference here.
ArkScript has strong dynamic typing too, like many other lisp.
The big advantage I would say ArkScript has, is its embedded capabilities. You can very easily use it in a project, as its C++ API has been designed for this.
Programming.dev MetaTo me (on voyager and on programming.dev website), !programming_languages@programming.dev still seems down
I released ArkScript v4 (github.com)
The article ArkScript September 2025 update is the last one I wrote, covering all the changes I made on the language this summer.
Hi there (a bit late, my bad) ; I've composed a short blog post about the language, comparing it with Clojure and Common Lisp: https://arkscript-lang.dev/blog/comparison-with-other-lisps/
Thanks, I’ll check it out!
Log monitoring software?
As many others here, I have a home lab at home, with various containers like FreshRSS, Ampache…
I find this paper false/misleading. They just translated one algorithm in many languages, without using the language constructs or specificities to make the algorithm decent performant wise.
Also it doesn’t mean anything, as you aren’t just running your code. You are compiling/transpiling it, testing it, deploying it… and all those operations consume even more energy.
I’d argue that C/C++ projects use the most energy in term of testing due to the quantity of bugs it can present, and the amount of CPU time needed just to compile your 10-20k lines program. Just my 2 cents
Thanks for the idea, I’ll try to add a comparison page soon!
The vertical alignement is now fixed, I got lucky with bootstrap ; it looks way nicer, thanks!
« America, fuck yeah » takes a whole new meaning
I double-checked, and it seems my timeout command was incorrect. I set it up again (with additional testing), and it now properly kills the container(s) after 20 seconds.
Thanks for your comment!
That’s a tough question, because it often boils down to preferences. I think a beginner developer or even someone fed up with the complexity of modern languages could be interested in the language, as it is very small but still more than usable. Only 9 keywords, no hidden meaning, everything follows the same rules : open a paren, then the first thing is a function call, the rest are arguments.
I think the « lisps have too many parentheses » is a false problem only used by trolls. I won’t say that you have to understand the flow or fall into the matrix to use it and avoid the parens, it’s more about having a consistent coding style so that you don’t have to care about the closing parentheses. Plus with a modern editor, parentheses groups have different colors and are easy to match, you can navigate to the starting / closing paren with a keybind (% in vim, command/ctrl M in jetbrains IDE).
I’m no frontend dev, so I battle a lot with it so it displays how I want ; I tried with flex to center vertically the « getting started » section, will have to try again.
Yes, there is a time, cpu and memory limit to the playground, no worries! I started the playground about a year ago but only just recently managed to compile to wasm, I’ll see in the future if I can swap the docker integration for it.
ArkScript, A small, lisp-inspired, functional scripting language (arkscript-lang.dev)
I’ve been working on this (not so little anymore) project for some time now, and I’m finally happy with the branding, UX and docs state.
First of all, the language is lisp inspired. ArkScript has s-expressions and code as data via its macros, its reads the same (left to right, prefix notation).
Keywords wise, we are not the same, which is a small but striking difference when comparing them side by side.
ArkScript has no classes nor structures, and no quoting/quasiquoting.
AFAICT both ArkScript and Common Lisp (a big lisp contender) have lexical scoping, so no real difference here.
ArkScript has strong dynamic typing too, like many other lisp.
The big advantage I would say ArkScript has, is its embedded capabilities. You can very easily use it in a project, as its C++ API has been designed for this.
ArkScript, A small, lisp-inspired, functional scripting language (arkscript-lang.dev)
I’ve been working on this (not so little anymore) project for some time now, and I’m finally happy with the branding, UX and docs state.
Nerd snipping myself into optimizing ArkScript bytecode (lexp.lt)
Instruction source location tracking in ArkScript (lexp.lt)
ArkScript is an interpreted/compiled language since it runs on a VM. For a long time, runtime error messages looked like garbage, presenting the user with an error string like "type error: expected Number got Nil" and some internal VM info (instruction, page, and stack pointers). Then, you had to guess where the error occurred.
I don't think error handling is a solved problem in language design (utcc.utoronto.ca)
Optimizing scopes data in ArkScript VM (lexp.lt)
I finally found a better memory layout to store variables in ArkScript, and I got a 76% performance boost on the binary tree benchmark, and a 21% perf boost on Ackermann(3, 7) Who knew using a contiguous storage buffer could be beneficial? 🤡
To me (on voyager and on programming.dev website), !programming_languages@programming.dev still seems down
Implementing an Intermediate Representation for ArkScript (lexp.lt)
Arkscript September update - macros and tooling (lexp.lt)
I’ve started putting the (long) forum posts I make about ArkScript on my blog, so that more people can follow the development. I must say I like the look of it, that’s also helping me getting back into blogging!
Shredding code at Zed (registerspill.thorstenball.com)