janet noted things - why janet

janet-noted-things.md

Interest

• can break (return) from middle of function body
• debugger support
• embeddable
• fast startup time
• language name starts with a 'j'
• less indenting than many lisps
• macros
• not just intel
• peg
• relative imports
• repl...but also with built-in color and completion
• single small executable
• some clojurish things
• some luaish things
• straight-forward to build custom single executable (via jpm)
• support for immutable and mutable
• use c libraries
• variety of platforms (linux, macos, windows)
• wasm via emscripten

Unexpected

• # for line comment start, not ;
• ~ for quasiquote, not backtick
• , for unquote
• ; for unpack (splat), e.g. (max 1 2 3) -> (max ;[1 2 3])
• | for short-fn (anonymous fn), e.g. |(+ 8 %)
• @ tends to indicate mutable, e.g. @[1 2] vs [1 2], @"hello" vs "bye"

Misc

Originally noted 2020-12