alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Fuse – statically typed functional programming language
Hi HN! I've been working on the fuse programming language, it's a statically typed purely functional language with higher-kinder types and ad-hoc polymorphism. It compiles to the GRIN whole-program optimizer, producing LLVM-generated native code.
Fuse supports ADTs, Generics, Type Methods, Traits, Pattern matching etc. all in a functional style with no mutations.
I’ve been developing the language for 5 years, with code written in Scala. I’ve started coding the language from the base of System F that was implemented as part of the book: Types and Programming Languages (tapl). And then extending with concepts such as Bidirectional Type Checking with Higher-Rank Polymorphism.
I’ve mainly drawn inspiration from Rust, Haskell, Scala and Python (in terms of syntax). It all started because I wanted a language that has Rust-like concepts such as: ADT, Traits, Impl block syntax, etc. but have the pure functional semantics.
I'd would love feedback on the language design and its general usage.
Comments
I wish you took Haskell's syntax as such. Why did you mix rust and possibly other stuff with it?
It's nice to see a GRIN backend in the wild!
It looks like a tidy little functional language - a small, easily grasped syntax surface and generally clear semantics. That you've got it to the point that it can compile and run proper programs is a great achievement for a solo dev project!
The string type in the standard library isn't Unicode-aware, might be worth just noting that. Unicode support can be a big undertaking, but considering whether you'll add it later or not might affect your library design now.
I don't really understand why you have an IO monad. The language isn't pure - `.exec()` means any function can perform IO actions no matter its type signature - so what's IO really for?
Do `impl` additions export? What happens when two libraries add the same function name with different signatures (or just bodies!) to a type's `impl` ?
Is currying automatic? It doesn't seem to be, but, eg, the `sum(x: i32, y: i32)` function theoretically could be called as `sum(5)` to create a closure, but this isn't a documented feature if so.
The website's font is using ligatures, not unicode operator symbols - I'd personally find it much clearer to use a non-ligature font to show what's really there, but that's immaterial to the language.