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https://github.com/hackworthltd/primer

A pedagogical functional programming language.
https://github.com/hackworthltd/primer

education functional-programming primer programming programming-language

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A pedagogical functional programming language.

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# Primer



Primer is a pedagogical functional programming language. This

repository contains Haskell implementations of:



* the core language;



* database adapters for storing Primer programs in a relational

  database; and



* a web service, or *backend*, which exposes a comprehensive

  programming language API to a client application, or *frontend*.



A companion repository,

[`primer-app`](https://github.com/hackworthltd/primer-app), contains a

web-based frontend application for reading, writing, running, and

debugging Primer programs.



Both projects are licensed under the terms of [version 3 (or later) of

the GNU Affero General Public License](COPYING), and can be freely

copied, modified, and distributed, so long as the license is

preserved.



# Important caveats



Both this implementation of the Primer programming language and the

language specification itself are still under heavy development. If

you use this implementation, you should expect lots of breaking

changes until we reach a [1.0

release](https://github.com/hackworthltd/primer/milestone/4).



For a very rough roadmap, see our [project

milestones](https://github.com/hackworthltd/primer/milestones). Please

note that we don't currently have any accurate time estimates for when

we expect these milestones to be reached, and the milestones are

subject to change.



**Please also read the following important caveats about the current state of the project**:



* There is no authentication (authn) system yet, nor an authorization

  (authz) system, so we strongly recommend that you not host a public

  Primer service until one or both of those systems are in place. It's

  safe to experiment with on a local system, or behind a robust

  identity-aware authentication proxy with a trusted audience, but if

  you host it publicly, be aware that anyone can read, modify, and

  delete any existing program; create new programs; and potentially

  [DoS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack) the

  server on which it runs.



* The current implementation of the step evaluator is very slow.

  Running very large programs, or even small programs that generate

  many reduction steps, is not practical at this time. Primer now also

  features an interpreter which is up to a few orders of magnitude

  faster than the step evaluator, but we lose the ability to step

  through programs redex-at-a-time as we can with the step evaluator.

  We plan to do future research to attempt to combine the two

  approaches somehow.



* Even the most minor frontend requests result in the entire program

  AST being sent over the network, rather than only what's changed.

  This is an obvious area for improvement, and we're certain that we

  can drastically reduce the amount of data being sent to the client

  application — we just haven't had a chance to prioritize this

  work yet. For now, however, please keep a very close eye on your

  network traffic if you're communicating with the Primer language

  server over a metered network connection, as the traffic can quickly

  add up.



* The Haskell API, HTTP APIs, and database schema are all very

  unstable, and guaranteed to change in compatibility-breaking ways

  before we reach a 1.0 project milestone.



* The language's semantics are still not fully baked, and there may be

  defects in its design and/or implementation, so existing Primer

  programs will probably break from time to time, with no guaranteed

  forward/backward compatibility path. In other words, you may lose

  work due to incompatibilities between old Primer programs and new

  releases of the language. Once we reach version 1.0, we'll only make

  breaking changes when absolutely necessary, and do our best to

  provide backward compatibility with existing programs, and/or ways

  to migrate old programs to the new semantics.



* At the moment, Primer is a pure functional programming language,

  with no effects system. This means, for example, it's not currently

  possible to [draw animated cats](https://scratch.mit.edu) using

  Primer. We're currently undecided on whether to add an effects

  system to version 2.0 of the language, or to eschew language-level

  effects entirely in favor of a different approach more suited to

  novices.

  

* We've yet to do any rigorous testing of Primer with students, and

  none at all in classrooms. Primer may turn out not be an effective

  way to teach functional programming to novices! That said, if you're

  an educator and you'd like to know more about the limited testing we

  *have* done to date, please reach out to us.



# Contributing



We welcome contributions from the community! Please read our

[contributing guide](CONTRIBUTING.md) if you think you'd like to help.



We also provide a comprehensive [development

guide](docs/development-guide-toc.md) for anyone who'd like to build

and run the project locally.