cliq

Dynamically typed, functional-ish language for funsies

With inspiration from Perl, Clojure, Nim, and OCaml

• Simple. Clean, straightforward syntax that's easy to read without needing to understand many concepts.
• Expressive. Code should more closely favor what it's doing, over how it's doing it.
• Friendly. Feedback should come in the form of helpful, friendly error messages.

cliq files have the file extension .clq, and they look like this:

defn rpn(xs) =
	let
		interpret = \s, o =>
			if (o == "+")
				s.dropLast(2) : s[-2] + s[-1]
			else if (o == "-")
				s.dropLast(2) : s[-2] - s[-1]
			else if (o == "*")
				s.dropLast(2) : s[-2] * s[-1]
			else if (o == "/")
				s.dropLast(2) : s[-2] / s[-1]
			else
				s : o
	in
		xs.reduce(interpret, [])

let tokens = [4, 1, 2, "+", "*", 3, "/", 2, "-"] in
say rpn(tokens).first()
# 2

There's not much documentation yet. For now, take a tour of the language in tour.clq

Planned work

• Actually friendly error messages. The framework for okay-ish error messages is there. But I want it much friendlier.
• Missing language features. There's still quite a few things, including syntax changes for things I've started hating. No doubt I'll change more parts of the syntax...
• A better repl. Multi-line support, history, introspection functions, etc. I like to use repl's a lot.
• Bytecode VM. At the moment it's a tree-walk interpreter, which is fine for now. But eventually I'd like to implement a bytecode VM.
• Integration tests. There are no tests. I know, I know... I'll add contract tests. Before working on the bytecode VM, I'll need a fairly extensive set of tests, so that I can test the compiler easily.
• Neovim plugin. Neovim is my editor of choice, so this would be nice, even if it's just for syntax highligting.
• Code formatter. Feels like a fun problem to solve? I'm sure I'll come to regret this one.

DESIGN.md also has a list of design decisions, and planned changes to syntax and features, but it's fairly raw and not written for others, so beware.

The name

cliq is named for my wife Cherie, and for my daughters Lucy and Quinn. The language should be expressive, emotive, cheeky, and fun — just like them.

Who's it for?

It's just for me, and for what I want in a language.