Disp¶
Disp is a programming language, with the goal of being a practical choice as a single programming languages across an organization.
This goal manifests itself as several sub-goals:
- good performance for many use cases: reduces the need of learning a second, faster language once your primary one hits performance limits.
- upgrading large codebases easily: reducing cost for major refactors, managing code across multiple code repositories.
- maintainability and readability: large organizations will face some level of developer churn, and the person who originally wrote the code may no longer be there.
The specific features of Disp include:
- homoiconic syntax: code is represented using standard data structures
- macro support: function that can do compile-time syntax evaluation
- compile-time execution: functions can execute on runtime, or compile time
Warning
Disp is not ready for use in any production project! Literally anything about the language can change until 1.0
You can see a recent code example here (solving the qualifier problem a for Google Code Jam 2008):
let n (int (read-line))
let i 0
while (not (eq i n))
let s (Int (read-line))
let possible-engines {}
let j 0
while (not (eq j s))
let e (read-line)
add possible-engines e true
let j (+ j 1)
let q (Int (read-line))
let j 0
let switches 0
let seen-engines {}
while (not (eq j q))
let e (read-line)
add seen-engines e true
if (eq (count seen-engines) (count possible-engines))
let seen-engines {}
add seen-engines e true
let switches (+ switches 1)
let j (+ j 1)
let i (+ i 1)
print "Case #"
print i
print ": "
println switches
To get a better understanding of where Disp shines, it’s recommended to read up on the features, and some disp-cases (use cases that inspired disp’s design).