Show HN: The Aria Programming Language

Aria is a modern, dynamic scripting language. It is meant to be a "sweet spot" language, easy to pick-up and enjoyable to use.

It comes with a familiar C-style syntax, and draws inspiration from a variety of languages. It has a small but usable standard library and strives to be a low-ceremony-get-stuff-done kind of language.

It is currently at version 0.9 and I would love feedback as I work towards getting it to 1.0.

github.com

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47 points

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egranata_aria

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6 days ago

16 comments

thenulldevice ・ 2 days ago

You do a good job on explaining the what of the language, but I cannot quickly find the why of the language. What is the language's purpose? Why should or could I use it?

  • mrbluecoat ・ 2 days ago

    Agreed. Feels like "a scripting language for C developers who hate JavaScript"

    • nottorp ・ 2 days ago

      That can be a decent "why" though...

account-5 ・ 5 days ago

I feel like I keep harping on about Nushell but as scripting languages go it's right up there for me. Built with rust too and comes with a ton of stuff built in.

What's the niche this fills? I came across roc-lang recently which seemed interesting too, again built with rust, and opinionated on certain things common in older languages.

It doesn't have to, and obviously it's your project, but what is this offering over other languages. Why would I reach for it?

  • egranata_aria ・ 5 days ago

    I hadn't really looked at Nushell, but it (process control) is definitely something I plan to improve in Aria (https://github.com/egranata/aria/issues/21). Right now I have a simple system() wrapper, but not much in terms of advanced subprocess control. Maybe worth investing some time in cleaning up?

    I have tried to fill the niche of "scratch my itches, please", which means Aria is intended to feel smooth, pleasant and simple to write in. There are still things I want to improve before calling it a 1.0, but the general theme is, a general purpose scripting language with just enough structure and as little ceremony as possible.

    It may be that I struck the wrong balance somewhere (and I know of a few places, e.g. operator overloading - I plan to rewire the syntax), and that would be great to get eyes on and get feedback!

ofalkaed ・ 6 days ago

What would this offer me over more established scripting languages? Main thing I want to know when I see a new offering. On a quick look I find the almost but not quite C syntax more difficult to read, like the lack of parenthesis on the if statement's test and this is my biggest issue with C like languages, they change things just enough that I have to think about it and I don't see what the change offers beyond those used to C syntax having to stop and think.

  • egranata_aria ・ 6 days ago

    Good news is I can offer you parentheses, but they are indeed optional on conditionals/loops. I am fairly sure there are other C-style syntaxes that leave those out. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2061593/why-do-c-languag... - you can't have the same ambiguity if you have mandatory braces around the body. Would there be a reason to require them?

    With that said, this will work just fine and you wouldn't have to think about it too hard, if at all:

      func main() {
    if (1 == 2) {
      println("oh no!");
    } else {       
      println("phew!");
    }
  }
    On the more general point, why this vs. anything else? That's a great question. I have tried to hit a balance that I think is pleasant to write code in (e.g. I like not having __init__.aria files around to define modules :-), and I like having proper enums, and so on...). I like to think someone would pick up Aria because it is a fun little language to try out and experiment with, not because it would change the world.

    Mileage may of course vary and you may think that balance is actually nowhere to be seen. That's great, hit me with it.

plainOldText ・ 2 days ago

Judging from the small example in the readme, the language looks pleasing to the eye.

What’s under the hood though? What are some of the technical choices, performance characteristics and longer term goals?

  • derdi ・ 2 days ago

    The current implementation looks like a compiler to a stack-based bytecode with a straightforward textbook interpreter. For example, here is the interpretation of the Add bytecode: https://github.com/egranata/aria/blob/master/vm-lib/src/vm.r...

    So to a very rough first approximation, performance characteristics should be in CPython's ballpark.

pshirshov ・ 2 days ago

Does it support higher-kinded types and typeclasses? Does it support call-site expansion?

drumnerd ・ 2 days ago

Why the name conflict with aria the technology?