Nova Programming Language

Posted by surprisetalk 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by ajkjk 1 day ago

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

Comment by sema4hacker 1 day ago

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

Comment by saghm 1 day ago

This was especially confusing to me when I clicked on the "try" button and was dropped into a page with an empty text box. Most playgrounds I've seen before at least have a "hello world" there. There's a run button, but it's not particularly useful with an empty file!

Comment by picometer 1 day ago

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

Comment by graypegg 1 day 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?

Comment by casuallyblue 1 day 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.

Comment by graypegg 1 day ago

OH! Ok that makes more sense. `:` from the tutorial is `-` or `~`, because it's the first char after the pipe.

I do lose track after that though, in my brain, It looks like the entire second part after the second pipe character should be just one long fact assigned to the stack between tildes, but I think it's adding each one of the bullet-prefixed lines to it.

Comment by yumaikas 1 day ago

That is one of a couple syntactical shorthands, explained a small bit here: https://nova-lang.net/introduction-to-nova/sight/#sometime-y...

Comment by casuallyblue 1 day ago

yeah, the "." is a syntax for putting multiple things on the same stack

[0] https://nova-lang.net/introduction-to-nova/sight/#sometimes-...

Comment by macintux 1 day ago

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

Comment by user2342 1 day ago

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

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by guywithahat 1 day ago

I found some example code on their github https://github.com/dan-online/Nova

Comment by forgotpwd16 1 day ago

This is an unrelated synonymous language. Besides this and submitted one, there're few others found online, one[0] being 20y+ old (first release 06/2003). There's also a research one on functional parallel programming[1], but no public implementation seems to exist. (Though conceptually Futhark is similar; maybe that Nova even influenced Futhark's creation.)

[0]: http://www.navgen.com/nova/index.html

[1]: https://research.nvidia.com/publication/2013-07_nova-functio...

Comment by xigoi 1 day ago

*homonymous (a synonym is the opposite of a homonym)

Comment by forgotpwd16 1 day ago

True, thanks. Had forgot this term even existed.

Comment by anonym29 1 day ago

Are you sure that a synonym is the opposite of a homonym, rather than say, the logical inverse corollary of a homonym? I'd think "the opposite of a homonym" would just be a word spelled differently from the target word, no?

Comment by xigoi 1 day ago

A synonym is a different word with the same meaning. A homonym is the same word with a different meaning.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by BoiledCabbage 1 day 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?

Comment by MisterTea 1 day ago

Prolog comes to mind with its facts and rules matching.

Comment by WorldMaker 15 hours ago

Even more so it reminds of Dialog [0], a Prolog specialized for interactive fiction and sort of the Z-Machine object system.

There's also some cross-over with how (parts of) Inform 7 works under the hood.

[0] https://linusakesson.net/dialog/docs/index.html

Comment by tehologist 1 day ago

I was thinking that this looks a lot like prolog or even make with rewrite terms

Comment by shrubble 1 day 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.

Comment by BoiledCabbage 1 day ago

I thought it was SNOBOL I was thinking of, but then I looked up the SNOBOL syntax and that wasn't it. Then I thought maybe REBOL but that wasn't it either. Following up from a comment below it was Eve that it seemed more similar to me (at least at first view).

And also replying to one more comment below. Modal on the developer June's website reminds me of Maude. If feel like term re-rewiting languages have a really cool idea in then that are just waiting to take off. Funny enough I think Maude also has a pattern matching system like Nova. although it's I believe an unordered bag of terms to match against instead of an ordered stack.

Comment by entaloneralie 1 day ago

Did you mean the REFAL rewriting language?

Comment by jibal 1 day 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.

Comment by graypegg 1 day 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

Comment by forgotpwd16 1 day ago

So that's why I found the username and language familiar. Was exploring this site few days ago. Besides this page, there's also one on Vera[0], what appears to be Nova's predecessor (at the end there's even link pointing to a defunct wiki under Nova's domain calling it Vera wiki).

[0]: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/vera.html

Comment by MarsIronPI 23 hours ago

XL[0] or its derivative Tao3D[1]? Regardless I think XL is a fascinating language. Being a Lisp person I find it neat when a language manages to write its core language constructs in itself.

[0]: https://xlr.sourceforge.io [1]: https://tao3d.sourceforge.net

Comment by delifue 1 day ago

Egison is a pattern-matching-oriented language https://www.egison.org/

Comment by ModernMech 1 day ago

https://witheve.com

Comment by ivanjermakov 1 day 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

Comment by oersted 1 day ago

Where did you get this? Of the three implementations I see here all three have available sources, Myte and Serpens don't have licenses, and Pyra has an Unlicense open-source license.

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

Comment by AyyEye 1 day ago

Their forgejo instance has an interpreter in go https://forge.nouveau.community/nova/ni

Comment by geenat 1 day 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.

Comment by junon 1 day ago

I'll give this a try but at first glance through the guides it appears to be missing a way to ergonomically output specific states. I haven't run it yet but I'm guessing it logs everything that happens which will get verbose unless asked for.

A while back there was a rewrite language that was posted (white on black theme site) that was similar but more geared towards coding problems and less on lit programming. I don't remember the name but it was equally as interesting. If anyone recalls what it was it'd be greatly appreciated.

Anyway if the creator is lurking here, examples demonstrating more practical, real world problems (even if still somewhat small) would go a long way.

Comment by incanus77 1 day ago

> A while back there was a rewrite language that was posted (white on black theme site) that was similar but more geared towards coding problems and less on lit programming. I don't remember the name but it was equally as interesting. If anyone recalls what it was it'd be greatly appreciated.

https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/pocket_rewriting.html

Comment by incanus77 19 hours ago

Yeah, I was like "rewrite language on a black & white site? I know this!" There can't be that many.

Comment by junon 1 day ago

Oh very cool, not what I was thinking of but it definitely fits my description. The one I was thinking of was text/code based. Thanks, this looks fun too.

Comment by escanda 1 day 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.

Comment by keychera 1 day ago

How does this compare to Rules engine/rete algorithm? I've been developing a game on top of a rules engine and I can't help but feel very familiar reading the 4 Nova core ideas

Comment by forgotpwd16 1 day ago

Some examples are available in the repos of Serpens/Myte[0][1] (Nova in-Python interpreter/to-JS compiler).

[0]: https://forge.nouveau.community/nouveau/serpens/src/branch/m...

[1]: https://forge.nouveau.community/yumaikas/myte/src/branch/mai...

Comment by arniemiller 1 day 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.

Comment by oersted 1 day ago

Huh...

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

> Pyra: Runs on Lua

> Serpens: Runs on Python

Comment by LennyHenrysNuts 1 day ago

What's it for?

Comment by Koshkin 1 day ago

Prolog-style programming

Comment by geldedus 23 hours ago

In the era of AI-assisted programming, creating new languages or new frameworks is a lost cause.

Comment by satiric 1 day 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?)

Comment by yumaikas 1 day 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

Comment by smaudet 1 day ago

I think the focus on the state machine may be the problem. I don't know much about prolog, or why it doesn't really enjoy more status in the programming world, but I suspect that while it is good at repesenting states, it is not very useful for writing programs...

Case in point, the pong programs. Looking at the impl, vs a <50 line js impl, this looks more like an assembly language for state, not necessarily something that makes state more visible or readily apparent...

Having a nice dialect for a (is this formally provable?) state machine is nice, but I'm not convinced founding the language from state machines is the correct approach vs merely using a fluent library e.g. https://stately.ai/docs/xstate

Not saying that I'm correct, but would be interesting to hear more of the philosophy of why Nova, vs just a simplisitic implementation of some card game rules...

Comment by ModernMech 1 day ago

When you say "friendlier" does that also mean "less powerful"? Prolog's execution engine is very capable, so does Nova give up some of that power in exchange for friendliness or does it somehow retain it?

Comment by yumaikas 1 day ago

Depends on what you mean by power, I suppose. Nova is Turing complete, so there's that.

One big difference between Nova and -most- logic languages is that "forgetting" things is a normal part of operation. Nova is also forward chaining, rather than backtracking.

The end result ends up with Nova programs being something closer to an interpreter in a lot of cases, and writing inputs for said interpreter.

So, Nova doesn't do as much on your behalf as Prolog does, deliberately trying to be easier to reason about, and to have more predictable performance characteristics.

Comment by seg_lol 1 day ago

Is this literate Prolog for Org Mode?

Comment by bobanrocky 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by 155231 1 day ago

iker

Comment by almosthere 1 day ago

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

Comment by airstrike 1 day 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

Comment by jibal 1 day ago

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

Comment by gkbrk 1 day ago

Who would confuse a programming language and a text editor?

Comment by throwaway613745 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by escanda 1 day ago

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

Comment by casuallyblue 1 day ago

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

Comment by 1 day ago