What does HackerNews think of janet?

A dynamic language and bytecode vm

Language: C

#43 in C
I learned it mostly just by reading through the official documentation[0], but also by looking at code examples in the test suite of the compiler itself at janet-lang/janet[1], the official contrib library at janet-lang/spork[2], and hanging out in the community chatroom on gitter[3].

Recently, one of the veterans in the community published an online beginner-focused book called "Janet for Mortals" that I wholeheartedly recommend: https://janet.guide

Aside from that, the community and ecosystem around Janet is still very much developing. I don't know of any really good tutorials on YouTube, for example, and while I know of a blog or two there aren't many. So there's totally a niche for someone to create new content, if that's something you're interested in doing.

[0] https://janet-lang.org/docs/index.html

[1] https://github.com/janet-lang/janet

[2] https://github.com/janet-lang/spork

[3] https://gitter.im/janet-language/community

Calvin rose, the author of fennel is a really great programmer and an even better language designer. Personally, i dont use or like lua, but I'm a big fan of one of his other projects, janet[0]

[0] https://github.com/janet-lang/janet

I've used Clojure for going on 10 years now and it has been one of the most enjoyable programming languages I've ever used. But I've gone back to Scheme for a few ridiculous reasons.

1. TCO. Using `recur` in Clojure just breaks my thought process. 2. Difficulty in getting down to the metal when needed. Using JNI is painful. In Scheme, when needed, the FFI usually handles plain old C. Much easier in my opinion. 3. Community. Rich is a really smart guy and has made great contributions, but he doesn't suffer fools lightly and I am a fool. Great for a scientist, not so much for a "benevelent dictator for life" of a programming language. 4. Pragmatism over correctness. There was a long running conflict about some set operations that did not return correct results. To my mind, there is no argument against correctness. 5. Slow startup. Not always a problem except when it is. 6. ClojureScript. Could be my unfamiliarity with ClojureScript/JavaScript, but I find I have to revert to JavaScript too often to get something done. And if I can't just use ClojureScript, why use ClojureScript?

Like any Lisp, Scheme is easier to read than Python, Java, JavaScript, Haskell, PHP, Perl, Fortran, Forth, APL, etc. Pascal is pretty good in this regard though. Clojure might actually be better in my opinion.

Why not Common Lisp? It's pretty good and at least as powerful. The warts annoy me though.

So I will continue using Scheme while looking into Janet https://github.com/janet-lang/janet. Janet has most of the things I like about Scheme _and_ Clojure. More experience will tell. I just miss the way maps are handled in Clojure.