« BackNova Programming Languagenova-lang.netSubmitted by surprisetalk 3 hours ago
  • ajkjk an hour ago

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

    • sema4hacker 31 minutes ago

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

      • picometer 29 minutes ago

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

        • graypegg 13 minutes 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?

          • casuallyblue 6 minutes 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.

          • macintux 25 minutes ago

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

        • ivanjermakov 2 hours ago

          --Not open source--, some code snippets here: https://nova-lang.net/introduction-to-nova/sight/

        • BoiledCabbage an hour 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?

          • graypegg 9 minutes 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 which seems to work on a tree rather than named LIFO stacks

            [0] https://june.codes/

            [1] https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/modal

            • shrubble 21 minutes 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.

              • MisterTea an hour ago

                Prolog comes to mind with its facts and rules matching.

              • geenat an hour 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.

                • escanda 2 hours 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.

                  • oersted an hour ago

                    Huh...

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

                    > Pyra: Runs on Lua

                    > Serpens: Runs on Python

                    • satiric 23 minutes 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?)

                      • yumaikas 16 minutes 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

                      • arniemiller 2 hours 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.

                        • almosthere 2 hours ago

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

                          • airstrike an hour 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

                            • gkbrk an hour ago

                              Who would confuse a programming language and a text editor?

                              • escanda 2 hours ago

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