8/2/2026 at 2:28:53 PM
Clicked like 5 pages and never found 1 code example.Idk why languages don't have their syntax in a sandbox front-and-center on the home page.
It's like a video game site with zero screenshots or videos (also rampant).
New programming languages I want 2 things:
1. What does the syntax look like
2. Why would I use this language
Talk about the proof logic, show the syntax, thank you
by cyanregiment
8/2/2026 at 3:10:00 PM
I'm the opposite: when landing in a programming language site I want to know the user case the authors had in mind, the memory model, the type system, the compilation targets, the data layout, the control structures, and only at the end just check that the syntax is not indentation based.by rixed
8/2/2026 at 3:31:33 PM
So I'm very seriously considering making my language indentation based. You're saying you wouldn't like that?by sroerick
8/2/2026 at 8:25:12 PM
Indentation based is a pain when copy-pasting between contexts with different indentation levels, as you have to fix it up manually, which is error-prone. In languages without it, you can just auto-format. (And even in an editor that doesn't support that, having a second indicator makes it less error-prone to fix manually)by Georgelemental
8/2/2026 at 9:16:15 PM
> have to fix it up manuallyAny editor written or actively maintained in the current century does this automatically for you. (Yes that obviously includes Emacs and Vim).
by teiferer
8/2/2026 at 9:39:43 PM
But that doesn't work if the indentation carries semantic meaning; you can't change the indentation without changing the meaning. Maybe you can correct syntactically-incorrect spacing (e.g. change 3 spaces to 4 spaces), but not much beyond that.by jcgl
8/3/2026 at 6:20:24 AM
The Vim I use increases the indent of a code block when I ask it to. Just like it places a closing curly brace at the point where I tell it to. I don't see the fundamental difference between these two things.by teiferer
8/3/2026 at 11:30:13 AM
But you have to ask it to, and by the right amount for every line/sub-block. If you accidentally get one line wrong, it could be a silent bug. In a language without significant indentation, as long as braces are preserved, once you are done moving code around a single autoformat will fix everything including nested blocks. And if you forget a brace, it's an error instead of a silent bugby Georgelemental
8/3/2026 at 2:08:38 PM
no, they can't in indentation based languages. changing indentation implies changing the code. A formatter isn't allowed to do thatby vrighter
8/3/2026 at 6:21:58 AM
In gdb? It's a shame gdb picked pythonby rurban
8/3/2026 at 3:28:02 AM
>copy-pastingUnderappreciated benefit of side benefit of indentation based languages: no copy-pasta.
by floxy
8/2/2026 at 4:23:34 PM
No indeed I'm not a fan. I find it brittle and arbitrary for data values especially; that also makes automatic code generation and edition harder, for no good reason. But that's not an important consideration either way.by rixed
8/2/2026 at 7:26:51 PM
What is code edition?by NuclearPM
8/2/2026 at 8:00:20 PM
> What is code edition?I think rixed means "code editing" (I guess that rixed is simply not a native (L1) or excellent L2 English speaker).
by aleph_minus_one
8/2/2026 at 5:26:29 PM
I don't mind indentation based languages. I used to hate them, but they've grown on me after using python, Haskell, Idris, Agda, etc. And I ended up making my own language indentation based (it is similar to Idris).That said, it is hard-mode:
- You'll have to figure out how to parse it.
- If you want editor support, it's a pain to get tree-sitter to handle it.
- You may not be able to pull off editor operations like "rename" without implementing a pretty printer (a rename might affect indentation).
I think it is helpful for crude error recovery. On parse error, my language will simply skip to the next column 0 token and parse another declaration.
I did not do this (hindsight), but I would recommend arranging the grammar so you only get indented blocks in cases where the previous line ends in a keyword that introduces it. I think python has a trailing `:` every time indentation is introduced, and Elm does this too - in statements like `let` you need a newline after the `let` to get the multi-declaration version. (This addresses the rename issue.)
by dunham
8/3/2026 at 3:30:24 AM
>a rename might affect indentationI think I need to see an example.
by floxy
8/2/2026 at 6:29:33 PM
For what it's worth, I love the semantics of many indentation based languages (F# for example) but really dislike editing them. Visually scanning is much easier with braces (imo) and it's much easier to navigate braced languages when using a vim-like editorby mcluck
8/2/2026 at 9:19:15 PM
For somebody unable to empathize with the "braces are easier to scan" part, could yiu explain why?I find it easy to see if things are on the same indentation. I find it much harder to visually scan for opening and closing braces unless syntax highliting makes them scream at me or they are accompanied by ...indentation.
by teiferer
8/3/2026 at 3:49:57 AM
I suspect this is a "what you are used to" and have trained yourself to look out for over many years of code reading.by throw234234234
8/3/2026 at 2:07:46 PM
indentation based immediately implies no safe copy pasting, and you can't count on a formatter to untangle the havoc pasting some code can wreakby vrighter
8/2/2026 at 3:42:00 PM
I think this falls under "[wanting] to know the user case the authors had in mind"by zlsa
8/2/2026 at 4:06:12 PM
There is no "user case", it's called use case.by BretonForearm
8/2/2026 at 4:29:24 PM
> There is no "user case", it's called use case.Perhaps English is not a native language for zlsa?
by aleph_minus_one
8/3/2026 at 12:58:53 AM
Honestly, I wouldn't worry about this. Indentation never got in the way of Python's success. There are plenty other things to worry about besides this.by dataflow
8/2/2026 at 4:46:22 PM
I love that people hate indentation based so I show them a poorly indented C style languages codebase to see how they feel about indentation.by giancarlostoro
8/2/2026 at 4:50:51 PM
Isn't it easy to just auto format it?by koolala
8/3/2026 at 12:28:06 AM
You mean add indentation to code where it shouldn't matter?by giancarlostoro
8/3/2026 at 3:28:35 AM
We need auto-unformatting too? Auto formatting that doesn't get added as a git change?by koolala
8/3/2026 at 12:47:22 PM
I just find it funny that the auto formatting adds the spacing to a very specific style, but requiring spacing is too much for some, readability is much richer in most Python projects I've opened (I can't think of one where it was terrible) compared to Java and C# projects I've opened due to people in Python following coding style standards more frequently, PEP-8 is king.by giancarlostoro
8/3/2026 at 2:22:35 AM
> I love that people hate indentation based so I show them a poorly indented C style languages codebase to see how they feel about indentation.And I love that people love indentation based languages so I show them a file with some spurious tabs to see how they feel about indentation causing silent errors.
by AdieuToLogic
8/2/2026 at 11:36:23 PM
Sure but even with no code indentation at all, an auto-formatter can easily indent everything for you because of the braces. If you have poorly indented code in a language like Python, you're on the hook for indenting everything yourself. And as a bonus, the code won't even run until you do.by sqlserver2008
8/2/2026 at 7:25:43 PM
Use case. Not “user case”.by NuclearPM
8/3/2026 at 5:40:54 AM
You'll be disappointed in F* then.by bmitc
8/2/2026 at 2:54:36 PM
To borrow your video game analogy. F* is the dwarf fortress of programming languages. Screenshots are only going to confuse anyone who isn't ready to take a significant mental journey.by Verdex
8/2/2026 at 7:53:32 PM
This is needless fearmongering. F* looks a lot like F# code with semantics you should be familiar with if you've worked with other proof oriented languages. The website design is dated is all. The book gives exactly what the OP wants in the introductory chapter.by redrobein
8/2/2026 at 9:30:43 PM
Fearmonger? Me? Well I never.Also
> if you've worked with other proof oriented languages.
That's doing a lot of heavy lifting.
by Verdex
8/2/2026 at 9:49:14 PM
Fearmonger is a little heavy handed but the comparison to Dwarf Fortress is probably too strong.I don't find F* syntax anymore intimidating than Haskell, Scala, Mercury, Prolog, etc. aka the hard languages. I love Ruby and I didn't find it intuitive when I first began learning it (specifically, the block/lambda passing mechanism).
by _doctor_love
8/2/2026 at 10:03:39 PM
Meanwhile I'm sure there's people out there baffled that anyone finds dwarf fortress challenging to get into.I'm old enough that I've had the pleasure of handholding software engineers through their first anonymous function usage. Effect system, refinement types, totality checker? The best I get is blank stares before they go back to C# and JavaScript. These days I'm just glad they tolerate linq expressions and typescript.
It matters where you're standing for what feels incomprehensible. But then again, you can say the same thing about dwarf fortress.
by Verdex
8/2/2026 at 10:32:11 PM
> These days I'm just glad they tolerate linq expressions and typescriptIf it walks like a duck, farts like a dog, and flies like a fish - it's Java$cript.
TypeScript is used by the pious - they think it will bring them closer to God.
> dwarf fortresses that prove code with math
And then there's you guys.
Gattir allar,
aþr gangi fram,
vm scoðaz scyli,
vm scygnaz scyli;
þviat ouist er at vita,
hvar ovinir sitia
a fleti fyr
by cyanregiment
8/3/2026 at 1:16:34 AM
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.
by _doctor_love
8/3/2026 at 2:35:45 AM
How does this relate to the topic? I'm willing to assume it does, I just don't get it. I'm probably overreacting because when Scott was writing this, tens of thousands of Scots living in poverty were being evicted via arson from their land and country. Saying they were dead in spirit is very elitist as he sat in comfort.by galangalalgol
8/2/2026 at 4:01:48 PM
> Clicked like 5 pages and never found 1 code example.But I clicked one (1) link to the online book and found a thousand?
by kasumispencer2
8/2/2026 at 4:45:16 PM
Should be on the home page of any programming language site.by giancarlostoro
8/2/2026 at 4:56:37 PM
Is there actually any difference when it's just one (1) link away? Are most of us seriously this busy that we cannot spend even half a minute on this?by kasumispencer2
8/2/2026 at 6:57:58 PM
There's a difference, yes. How big it is isn't really relevant question cause its simply an unnecessary tax on visitors.by broken-kebab
8/2/2026 at 2:49:07 PM
https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/by munchler
8/2/2026 at 2:57:31 PM
> https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/FYI: The link to this tutorial is unluckily a little bit obscured on the F* website: Go to
> https://fstar-lang.org/index.html#learn (1)
and click on the image below the text "You probably want to read it while trying out examples and exercises in your browser by clicking the image below.".
In the section of (1) also the PDF version is linked:
> https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/proof-oriented-programming-i...
by aleph_minus_one
8/2/2026 at 3:07:52 PM
I still don't see any code examples!But I do see the editor to try it.
I wonder why more languages don't have a few simple examples of: "HTTP server", "hello world", "todo list app" that you can just click and it shows the code for how you'd make it in that language.
It matters a lot how the syntax looks IMO and seeing how, say, an API is scaffolded, helps understand a lot about the language in one glance
Edit: Page 18 of the PDF. That's the first time I found what the code looks like, thanks for sharing!
by cyanregiment
8/2/2026 at 4:24:44 PM
> I wonder why more languages don't have a few simple examples of: "HTTP server", "hello world", "todo list app" that you can just click and it shows the code for how you'd make it in that language.Often the reason is that the value that the programming language brings is thinking very differently about how to write code - the examples how to write something in it are merely the "more boring" consequences of this different way of thinking.
--
If you want a programming language that "just" enables you to write something well-understood (in particular in the area of web development) like your suggested
> "HTTP server", "hello world", "todo list app"
in a perhaps just a little bit more elegant/concise way, just look at which web development language/framework is currently fashionable on HN.
by aleph_minus_one
8/2/2026 at 7:48:31 PM
> just look at which web frameworkSee, by listing those, you can tell what it is.
I imagine the quick project showcase would be different for Swift or for Rust.
Would be nice to have something like that for this Fstar or any language I haven’t heard of - or maybe have but never looked into so I see why people are using it.
Like what kinds of things i can even think of writing with it - an implementation example
by cyanregiment
8/2/2026 at 7:57:16 PM
> I imagine the quick project showcase would be different for Swift or for Rust.> Would be nice to have something like that for this Fstar or any language I haven’t heard of - or maybe have but never looked into so I see why people are using it.
I suggest simply having a look at the table of contents of
> https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/proof-oriented-programming-i...
This in my opinion gives you a first rough idea for what kind of problems people are using F*.
Spoiler alert: these are not the kind of problems which are related to ["HTTP server", "hello world", "todo list app", ...].
This is exactly the reason why I wrote further above:
> Often the reason [why more languages don't have a few simple examples of: "HTTP server", "hello world", "todo list app"] is that the value that the programming language brings is thinking very differently about how to write code - the examples how to write something in it are merely the "more boring" consequences of this different way of thinking.
by aleph_minus_one
8/2/2026 at 8:11:04 PM
> these are not the kind of problems which are related to ["HTTP server", "hello world", "todo list app", ...].Ok, what kinds of problems are they?
And ideally - what does a simple solution look like in F-star?
Set me on the path to installing the thing (ideally above the fold)
by cyanregiment
8/2/2026 at 10:00:20 PM
> Ok, what kinds of problems are they?> And ideally - what does a simple solution look like in F-star?
RTFM
Or to explicate on this point: find a section in the table of contents that looks interesting to you, go to the respective section, and look at a code example.
> Set me on the path to installing the thing (ideally above the fold)
How to install this thing:
1. Read https://fstar-lang.org/index.html#download
2. Go to the GitHub page linked there: https://github.com/fstarlang/fstar/releases
3. Download F* for an operating system of your choice there.
by aleph_minus_one
8/3/2026 at 2:46:43 AM
You are right that someone could go through that effort bat that only really makes sense if they give you some.idea how to use it.Reading the exchange it seems like you got caught up on the illustrative examples the other person used. If a web server isn't a good example of a simple problem for F* the landing page should have an example of something that is. It shouldn't take going through that many steps to understand the so what.
by a1j9o94
8/2/2026 at 3:07:11 PM
I guess it's a bit popular right now * Error 17 at Welcome.fst(24,0-28,30):
- Could not start SMT solver process.
- Command: ‘/home/site/wwwroot/fstar/bin/z3’
- Exception:
Unix.Unix_error(Unix.ENOENT, "create_process", "/home/site/wwwroot/fstar/bin/z3")
1 error was reported (see above)by _flux
8/2/2026 at 2:40:13 PM
just click the screenshotby rainyq
8/2/2026 at 3:12:44 PM
Takes you to an empty editor with still no code examplesby cyanregiment
8/2/2026 at 2:47:22 PM
I clicked on 2 links on the main page in the Learn F* section...by qzzi
8/2/2026 at 4:05:51 PM
That’s because syntax is the least interesting part of F*.by remywang
8/2/2026 at 4:06:53 PM
Then why are we all so interested?Examples provide more than syntax. It's the semantics that we care about most.
by thomastjeffery
8/2/2026 at 4:27:59 PM
> Examples provide more than syntax. It's the semantics that we care about most.... and this semantics is explained in a quite encompassing way in the introductory notes "Proof-Oriented Programming in F*":
> https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/proof-oriented-programming-i...
by aleph_minus_one
8/2/2026 at 8:46:39 PM
The OP doesn't want encompassing, they want the following example from the tutorial on the front page: type vec (a:Type) : nat -> Type =
| Nil : vec a 0
| Cons : #n:nat -> hd:a -> tl:vec a n -> vec a (n + 1)
let rec append #a #n #m (v1:vec a n) (v2:vec a m)
: vec a (n + m)
= match v1 with
| Nil -> v2
| Cons hd tl -> Cons hd (append tl v2)
Edit: For comparison, Rocq https://rocq-prover.org/ and Lean https://lean-lang.org/ both manage to do this.
by derdi
8/2/2026 at 11:32:48 PM
I'm not the OP, but this is exactly my interpretation, and my gripe with the homepage as well in lacking this concise yet powerful example. You can tell a lot about a programming language by looking at the right snippet.by rybosome
8/2/2026 at 5:10:46 PM
Thank you ! I just had the absolute same experience and was about to write a similar comment - take my upvote instead !by voodooEntity
8/3/2026 at 5:41:49 AM
Two clicks take you to the tutorial: https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/by bmitc
8/2/2026 at 7:52:34 PM
What? There’s literally a completely interactive book linked right from the home page.by summarity