Show HN: The Blots Programming Language

What would you say is a benefit of using this over using jq?

Super cool! I’ve always wanted to make my own lil language and I’ve always been too intimidated to try.

For contrast, here's how I'd handle the example given on the front page in Lil[0]:

    i:"%j" parse shell["curl -s https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/BOU/63,62/forecast"].out
    t:i.properties.periods..temperature
    o.average:(sum t)/count t
    o.minimum:min t
    o.maximum:max t
    show[o]

Lil doesn't have implicit parsing of .json arguments like Blots- certainly a nice feature for the niche Blots is aimed at. Lil also doesn't have an arithmetic average as a builtin like Blots, but in this case it's easy enough to do without.

The biggest difference here is how Lil handles indexing: The ".." in that second line can be read as "for every index"; a wildcard. I can follow the mapping that occurs in Blots' "via" expression, but I find it less clear in this example.

It can also be nice to treat lists-of-objects as proper SQL-like tables:

     select number name temperature windSpeed from table i.properties.periods
    +--------+-------------------+-------------+---------------+
    | number | name              | temperature | windSpeed     |
    +--------+-------------------+-------------+---------------+
    | 1      | "This Afternoon"  | 54          | "14 mph"      |
    | 2      | "Tonight"         | 46          | "3 to 12 mph" |
    | 3      | "Wednesday"       | 69          | "5 mph"       |
    | 4      | "Wednesday Night" | 45          | "3 mph"       |
    | 5      | "Thursday"        | 79          | "5 mph"       |
    | 6      | "Thursday Night"  | 49          | "5 mph"       |
    | 7      | "Friday"          | 83          | "2 to 6 mph"  |
    | 8      | "Friday Night"    | 52          | "6 mph"       |
    | 9      | "Saturday"        | 81          | "3 to 8 mph"  |
    | 10     | "Saturday Night"  | 53          | "3 to 8 mph"  |
    | 11     | "Sunday"          | 81          | "3 to 7 mph"  |
    | 12     | "Sunday Night"    | 54          | "3 to 7 mph"  |
    | 13     | "Monday"          | 77          | "3 to 7 mph"  |
    | 14     | "Monday Night"    | 53          | "3 to 7 mph"  |
    +--------+-------------------+-------------+---------------+

I hope you continue to tinker and evolve Blots; a personal scripting language guided by the use-cases you encounter naturally can be very rewarding and useful.

[0] http://beyondloom.com/tools/trylil.html

    ~> http get https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/BOU/63,62/forecast 
       | from json 
       | get properties.periods.temperature 
       | {average: ($in | math avg) minimum: ($in | math min) maximum: ($in | math max)}
    ╭─────────┬───────╮
    │ average │ 66.36 │
    │ minimum │ 52    │
    │ maximum │ 81    │
    ╰─────────┴───────╯
    ~>

From the readme:

  [1, 2, 3] * 10  // [10, 20, 30] (because [1 * 10 = 10, 2 * 10 = 20, 3 * 10 = 30])
  [4, 5, 6] > 3 // true (because [4 > 3 = true, 5 > 3 = true, 6 > 3 = true], so the condition is true for all elements)

I guess most people would have expected that second expression to return

  [true, true, true]

Is this really more practical to single out booleans like that, compared to having a separate step for ANDing?

I’m curious, what was the hardest part about making Blots? And what was the most fun part?

Blot on the landscape was a brilliant subversive comedy British TV series from the 80s.