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frik

A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript (uncompressed), no library:

http://jsfiddle.net/ondras/hYfN3/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6725387

You can compare it to the readable 67 lines of code in red-lang

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Red's author here. In all fairness, for that JS spreadsheet to not look ugly, you need to account for the CSS code too, which is ~35 more lines of normally spaced code. Also, there's no realtime reactivity like in our demo where the cells update as you type.

For the "no library", well, you have tons of libraries included in a ~100MB runtime (browser) required to run and render that demo, while Red's one runs on the OS directly (our runtime is 0.6MB uncompressed and entirely written in Red, not a single 3rd-party library). ;-)

That said, that JS demo code is very nice, and its slickness impressive.

If we're really going to be fair, the JavaScript is a much more readable 30 loc than your nigh incomprehensible block of "17" loc which looks like something out of the obfuscated C contest. I expect you rely on the OS for some stuff, why not factor in the size of that?

@dockimbel: perhaps adding some syntax coloring of your code example might help here, the syntax is hard to parse if you don't know what to look for..

If you want the fully unfolded version you have it there [1]. If you count the JS + CSS lines, then it's about the same size as the Red unfolded version.

[1] https://gist.github.com/dockimbel/b0a413342dc39568696207412a...

If you really want to be fair, you all would count all the LOC that makes all that possible. Then we'll see who is pissing further!

given the size of the the entire thing, the LOC of these programs are a rounding error anyway.

I am no expert here, but given the Red system is under 1MB, and the Java browser is over 100MB, wouldn't what they use in the OS be the same, and therefore Red is still 100 times smaller. Just curious. I find the whole self-contained thing under 1MB with no dependencies very intriguing. Especially afer looking at the other demos that are not trying to code golf. Great GUIs and respectable speeds, and easy to distribute.

Code never runs in a vacuum, so arguing about the size of the elephants on the way down is pointless, which is my point.

What I do see is that the JavaScript does all of this much more cleanly and intelligibly, and has an honest line count.

Incidentally, I also think that cleanly separating presentation from logic is an advantage of the JS / CSS divide, even is JavaScript if far from perfect and CSS is actively horrible.

I did a VID version of the demo, that shows a hint at how styling works in Red.

https://gist.github.com/greggirwin/8d0b1c02ccdbd5520d9c77d49...

The reactive logic is all lifted from the original. Around line 40 you can see where styles are defined inline. Originally I had them just defining visual aspects, but then moved the actors into the cell style as well.

With native widgets, you don't get complete control, and they won't match across platforms. Rebol had its own GUI system, and I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar done by a clever Red...we don't have a name for folks who write Red yet. Racket got the best name, with Racketeers.

That's much clearer, thanks!

Folks who use Red could be referred to as communists ;-) If it takes off, you'll be Big Red.

Good to see that. After all, the article was close to code golfing and not using the new VID to keep it succinct.

More VID demos and the type of FRP in RED would be more enticing to me. But truth be told, I stumbled upon Red when looking at short programs translating text to morse code. The Red example (from Rebol actually) was very short, yet easy to read. I program in J, so I know what short, and unreadable means to others; I personally like J.

I don't think it is pointless. But I am curious, not being a JavaScript dev, what would be the closest analogy to Red's setup. For instance, you can download Red for multiple platforms under 1MB, and without a browser, it self-compiles and you have a full coding environment.

I realize browsers are ubiquitous, so in essence you just need to count the size of browser, JS engine and code. What would be the bare minimum JS setup to provide core libs, GUI, and other helper libs and a way to run it/distribute it sans relying on pre-installed browsers. Would that be Chromium or Electron? Can you choose the best engine with them, or are they attached to the browser or minimal browser?

Shameless plug: I wrote a Tcl/Tk spreadsheet inspired by that JavaScript one that others have since trimmed down to 29 lines: https://tcl.wiki/41294. (HN discussion of the initial version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9275268. Note the K spreadsheet in the comments.)

I am rather a fan of both Tcl's and Rebol's GUI DSL.

Edit: I'll explain how the Tcl/Tk spreadsheet works. I am not sure I understood Red's reactive framework quite enough to compare and contrast the two implementations correctly, so if you do understand it, I would love to read your comparison.

The spreadsheet cells are ::ttk::entry widgets comparable to <input type="text"> that are created in a loop and laid out using the built-in [grid] geometry manager. When a cell is created its value is bound to a variable like "A2" by two-way data binding. We then add a "trace" to that variable so that when it is read the command [recalc] runs to update its value based on the formula for the cell before the read completes. This triggers update cascades that resolve chains of dependencies between the cells' formulas. The formulas are plain Tcl expressions mangled by a regexp to allow you to reference the values of variables like "A2" without the "$" prefex.

Your Tcl/Tk version is duly appreciated in the original post as well.

Thanks for pointing that out! The "How does it work?" subsection header caught my eye and I totally missed the mention. :-) I am happy to see it inspire others.

There is kind of a wow effect to such short code examples but I resist to see consequences for real-life use. Adding a few more features like charts and actual Excel-file export and import is no rocket science but will render that code base unreadable. I rather prefer 5 kLoc boilerplate and have a proper foundation to start with.

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