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Comment by tempodox | Hacker News Reader

As long as JS lacks partial application and the ability to define infix operators (for monadic `bind`, etc), it's always going to be ugly. Not that JS would be a good language for that to begin with. We need a serious functional language that compiles to WASM.

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> We need a serious functional language that compiles to WASM.

Aren't there already a few? OCaml?

What's "serious" in this context?

Really? If OCaml has a compiler to Wasm, I’m not aware of it. I’m only aware that it compiles to JS (via js_of_ocaml or Bucklescript). Could I please have a link to the Wasm compiler if you have it?

I read somewhere that an OCaml to LLVM compiler was attempted, but people had problems with the GC aspect. I don’t know if this claim is true, though.

> I once read that an OCaml to LLVM compiler was attempted, but people had problems with the GC aspect. I can’t confirm this claim though.

I was thinking of the same, but I hadn't/haven't used it so you may be right it never came to fruition.

Whenever I manage to find time to hack on it: https://github.com/SanderSpies/ocaml/tree/wasm-backend.

It compiles to wasm object files and links files with LLVM's LLD. My current challenge is ensuring that the stdlib correctly translates to wasm. The C parts are not translated yet - which means: no gc, no exceptions, no tail calls.

People are working on making Haskell compile to web assembly.

[0] https://www.tweag.io/posts/2018-05-29-hello-asterius.html [1] https://github.com/tweag/asterius

"Lacks partial application"? What about:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

Meanwhile infix operators are just syntax sugar and can be emulated in other ways.

`Function.bind` is a fairly poor match to partial application because A) it will not execute the function if you provide enough arguments and B) it also binds `this`, meaning you have to pass NULL or some other value every time you use it. https://ramdajs.com/docs/#curry would be a better option, as JS' metaprogramming features actually do somewhat support partial application.

PureScript compiles to JS but it's quite readable JS: http://www.purescript.org/

How come that PureScript feels so mathematical to me and Reason/OCaml don't?

Aren't they both FP languages?

Just hard work. Making it look natural and pragmatic is a non-trivial discipline and dare I say, rather thankless work.

(I’m assuming you meant to convey a slightly negative connotation through “mathematical”. Though I myself do like PS too)

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