What is Reddit's opinion of Hy?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

> Someone has to compete with Rob 'Commander' Pike for most opinionated language designer.

I'm not sure that's even a contest. Guido's got his head so far up his own arse that I don't think even Commander Monochrome's planet-sized ego can compete.

My favourite Guido-ism is still this:

> "I ended up hating reduce() because it was almost exclusively used (a) to implement sum() . . . So we added builtin sum() at the same time we demoted reduce() from a builtin to something in functools (which is a dumping ground for stuff I don't really care about :-)." (source)

He also tried to remove lambda, filter, and map until people screamed at him enough.

He basically just hates functional programming without knowing much about it ("Admittedly I don't know much about the field besides Haskell, but any language less popular than Haskell surely has very little practical value") so he's against anything that might make it easier in Python. Hy's existence would probably make him irrationally angry (FP on top of Python? The nerve) if he actually knew anything other than Python and Haskell existed.

Docs are at http://hylang.org/

It compiles to pretty darn OK Python AST/Bytecode - so that we can maintain bi-directional interop. Think of it like Python with s-expressions and more tools for handling functional programming.

The interop works so well in both directions that Django apps work great. Re-implementing a runtime is fun, but I'd rather take the interop :)

• Nope.
• Nope.
• I'm really more of a library guy than a framework guy. That is, I'd rather handle the overall organization of a program myself and call other people's subroutines than write callbacks for somebody else's application. My favorite language is Hy, because it has the power of Lisp and the libraries of Python.
• Ew, word processors. I use LibreOffice if I must.
• I've never edited a video.
• I guess VLC is pretty okay.
• Carrots. Curse those blackguards who will cook and butter a perfectly good carrot.
• Garlic. But I don't really want to try garlic ice cream.
• Hardwood floors are probably best. They're comfortable and easy to clean.

You might be interested in Hy (http://hylang.org/) which is a Lisp front-end for Python. It comes with some nicities like a threading macro and since it's a Lisp you can add any other syntax you're missing.

I actually have spent quite a bit of time fighting against Python's feeble lambdas, inside-out conditional expressions, and lack of distinction between declaration and assignment. I mean, I've written a lot of stuff in Python, but I expect to be using Hy more in the future. Hy macros should be especially nice in place of the deeper abuses of Python's syntax used in the data-analysis family of modules (numpy, scipy, pandas, statsmodels, patsy, and scikit-learn).

Ok, that's very interesting. You probably have quite a different perspective.

I am not particularly good at Java but when I started clojure I was able to read / modify existing Java codebases. I had a weak grasp of the whole pom/ant/maven setups (still weak) but clojure removes all of that. And once you're past that, as long as you can find your way around javadocs you can write programs that are actually practical. For me, the ability to write code that is actually useful, while learning the syntax, makes picking it up easier (emacs is almost the extreme case, because you operate directly on the text within the editor while you code).

If you are not yet comfortable navigating Java it will probably take some more time.

If you haven't already, you might consider playing with http://hylang.org/ for a bit first. It's basically a Clojure for Python. It's not completely the same (Clojure is more expressive, faster, and has better tooling), but

1. the syntax is similar enough that the idioms transfer with little effort
2. the hosted language philosophy is similar, which will help if you go into ClojuresScript, Clojure CLR, or other Clojure-like languages later
3. you already know Python, and Hy's interop syntax is the same
4. Hy has a transparent transpiler that lets you see exactly what python code your Hy generates
5. you can import Hy modules from python code and vice versa. Everything you write can be immediately useful

Once you get the hang of Hylang you can probably then dive head first into Clojure.

Hylang programs get annoying after they reach a certain size due to the slow transpile time and weak tooling, otherwise it's pretty fun overall. I'm gonna guess that when you get annoyed at the transpile times your mind is adapted to thinking in Clojure. Also, if you happen to use Emacs, hylang works with inferior-lisp-mode too.

If you are willing to go beyond Common Lisp, you may want to try hy: a lisp over python - so you can access all of python's libraries. It's still in development, and I haven't done any serious development with it, so take it with a pinch of salt.

I think one of the major demerits of lisp are its lack of libraries - if only we had access to python's libraries.

With that thought, I came across hylang - while not common lisp, it's a lisp over python that has / will have the macro-system of lisp, and the python libraries as well: I'm converted! Enjoy hy-ing!