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6 points by bayareaguy 6314 days ago | link | parent | on: Take the Arc Challenge

Arc seems to embody the idea that "Language design is library design, and vice-versa", but how can we tell where the boundry is?

When I look at something like

  (defop said req
    (aform [w/link (pr "you said: " (arg _ "foo"))
           (pr "click here")]
      (input "foo") 
      (submit)))
what I see is more or less ordinary lisp that uses a library to solve an issue with applications that rely on http. I'm sure plenty of us could do the equivalent with the appropriate Python/Perl/Php/Ruby library, but then the obvious criticism would be that you're not really comparing lanugages. You would be comparing libraries.

Plenty of examples here: http://arclanguage.com/item?id=722

Is it really the case that when you boil it down, Arc (language+libraries) is about making small web programs? If not, why this challenge and if so I suspect it won't live up to the 100-year idea.

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2 points by bayareaguy 6316 days ago | link | parent | on: I hereby propose...

I like this story arc.

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2 points by bayareaguy 6316 days ago | link | parent | on: The proposed : syntax

Something doesn't look right here. I think I know what you're trying to propose but if

    foo:
        bar
        baz
is the same as

    foo bar baz
and

    if (predicate):
        (then-instr)
        (else-instr)
is the same as

    if (predicate) (then-instr) (else-instr)
then shouldn't the second example

    + 1:
        * x x
        * y y
be the same as

    + 1 * x x * y y
?

Or alternately if the indented lines gain implicit parens shouldn't

     foo:
        bar
        baz
be the same as

    foo (bar) (baz)

?

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3 points by fmota 6316 days ago | link

Yes, you stumbled right into the problem with this scheme. But it's not really a problem if you accept PG's idea that parens are allowed to be implicit whenever that is the only thing that makes sense.

So, in the case of

    + 1:
        * x x
        * y y
The parens around * x x and * y y are implicit.

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Character 2221 (measured angle) from the mathematical operators range would be good too.

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2 points by bayareaguy 6318 days ago | link | parent | on: Welcome

ubuntu mzscheme is not an "acceptable" scheme.

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3 points by bayareaguy 6318 days ago | link | parent | on: Minor nit in blog.arc

It looks like you need to manually create arc/posts too.

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