Topic: Languages

In the last article I outlined a simple model of modules and that is kinda implemented but needs a few fixes. The next step is how to find and combine modules and this is an area where I want to push the envelope a bit. Most popular package/module systems today are quite trivial in nature. Often it’s a command line tool that queries central catalog(s) and then proceeds by downloading code in the form of source files onto disk. Then the compiler or runtime environment finds and loads the code by simply looking for files on disk. There are several parts of this that are very primitive.

As discussed in the previous article I want Spry to have a trivially accessible persistence mechanism enabling something similar to the Smalltalk image model, but based on a database. The memory organisation in Spry is basically nested Maps. After dwelling a bit on the inevitable hard question about modules and namespaces I have decided on a design that I hope will turn out simple and reasonably powerful!

In developing Spry - renamed from Ni - I am getting closer to the Really Fun Stuff.

When I started out implementing my own language in Nim I named it “Ni” without that much thought actually. It was a pun on “smaller than Nim” (obviously one letter shorter!) and of course with a reference to Monty Python.

I now work as the Team Lead at Evothings and our open source product is a Workbench for creating mobile HTML5 applications focused on IoT, by editing and running them live on the mobile device inside our spiced up Cordova based “Evothings Viewer”.

It seems like the “damp cloth of Java” that has been plastered all over the programming landscape the last 20 years is finally being lifted. I admit, I do dislike Java …immensely. And not only on technical grounds, but even more based on what I perceive as it’s community worshipping complexity for it’s own sake. Of course IMHO.

So… Ni has almost reached the point where I can see objects appearing. The following describes the design I currently have in mind, read it and tell me what you think so I can scrap it and start over ;)

So… my little Ni language got some attention since it was first on Hackernews, then TheRegister, all over Twitter and also Reddit.

This article describes some core parts of the current implementation of the Ni (now known as Spry) language. It’s not a tutorial, introduction or manual. It’s in fact kinda incoherent - but so is Ni :)

Ni is my own little language heavily influenced by Smalltalk but also other sources like Rebol, Forth, Lisp, Self and Nim. Ni is a bit strange, but it’s not academic and really meant to become something useful.