tipi-lang/README.md

crud-lang

What is this?

• an experimental language for CRUD applications (backend only though, I think)

• Enterprise as a first-class citizen

  • built in types for dates and uuid for example
  • collection literals
  • ease of use for CRUD operations, like automatic mapping from sql rows to json

• a simple, yet powerful language

• urls are made up of directories and filenames

• a controller sourcefile is a file with the .ctl extension

• likewise:

  • .svc services
  • .cl service clients (that call other services)
  • .dao database access code (not objects)
  • .qc queueconsumers
  • .qp queueproducers
  • .utl utilities

• there is a strict calling hierarchy. A service can not call a controller. It can only go 'down'.

• Services can not call other services, because that is the recipe for spaghetti. Refactor your logic, abstract and put lower level code in utilities.

• Utilities are allowed to call other utilities. OMG, spaghetti after all! TBD

• Automatic memory management using an arena per call

• It is an interpreter written in rust. OMG!

• And it has everything I like in other languages

  • strictly typed
  • [] is a list
  • {} is a map
  • no objects, no inheritance
  • structs and duck typing
  • everything is an expression
  • nice iterators.
  • First class functions? Maybe...
  • automatic mapping from database to object to json
  • indenting like python

types

• u32, i32
• u64, i64
• f32, f64,
• string, bool, char
• struct, enum
• date

question

• how to model headers
• middleware, implement later
• JWT tokens, I guess

**the example in /src: **

• a very simple api that listens to GET /api/customers{:id} and returns a customer from the database

Design

• heavily inspired by Crafting Interpreters
• language influences from rust and python
• compiler first creates an AST and then compiles to bytecode (no file format yet)
• uses a stack-based virtual machine

status:

• compiler and runtime are still limited but working
• supports:
  • basic types:
    • 32/64 bit integers, signed and unsigned
    • 32/64 bit floats
    • strings
    • bools
    • chars
  • type checking and type inference (although it needs more testing)
  • arithmetic expressions
  • function declaration and calling
  • indenting like python (for now just 1 level, but both tabs or double spaces)
  • strict typing like in rust (no implicit numeric conversions)
  • basic set of operators, including logical and/or and bitwise operations

What's next?

• collection types: list and map
• object/struct types
• control flow
• tests