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curist | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

JavaScript as an ecosystem and language became much more accessible than ever, with all the toolings and TypeScript, it's easier to build abstractions upon abstractions; and people love to have their own version of abstractions. It's human nature, it's inevitable.

curist | 3 years ago | on: WasmEdge

Finally a WASM runtime provides a more detailed C API document.

curist | 3 years ago | on: How I Built Zig-SQLite

By using comptime, the statement couldn't be runtime composed, right? That's currently the major holdback for me to spend more time on zig: if using comptime become more common in zig community, the libs could be less flexible to use. It feels sort of like function coloring to me, that the whole call chain also need to pass down the value as comptime variable. I've only spend 2 days with zig, so I would love to learn if I'm wrong on this subject.

curist | 4 years ago | on: The Problem with Macros

Didn't recognize you're the OP! So my comment may not be that off-topic then :D

> But learning programming language theory is the best part :)

That's very true :)

curist | 4 years ago | on: The Problem with Macros

> (do-texture texture > o O r R x2)

This might be another reason why I find macros less appealing: macros introduce DSL in form of normal s-expression, but they don't actually behave like a function; macros introduce their own mini-language/syntax.

In the last example you provided, I bet the macro implementation would look like a little interpreter? If that's the case, having a function call like

  doTexture(myTexture, ['op1', 'op0', 'opR'])
and let doTexture handle each cases(ops), might be able to achieve the same behavior, right?

I'm not trying to argue that macros are unnecessary, I really want to like them! Just most of the time, I find functions are sufficient enough.

curist | 4 years ago | on: The Problem with Macros

May be unrelated, but that's why I prefer the way JS approach this kind of problem: JS doesn't have macros.

People use callback function to achieve almost the same thing

  function doTexture(texture, fn) {
    beginTextureMode(texture)
    fn()
    endTextureMode()
  }
  
  doTexture(myTexture, () => {
    drawCircle()
    drawRectagle()
  })
At the cost of being more verbose, we get the benefit of one thing less to learn; and simplicity is a powerful feature IMO.

I guess why this is less popular in lispy languages is because

  1. macro
  2. callback functions introduce more indent levels :(
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