Hacker News Reader

I didn't know about that other Cicada language, but the part about using a DSL for this does seem unnecessary to me. I haven't dived into the docs at all, so if anyone has I'd be curious to know what this DSL offers over Python, Starlark, or any other existing programming language?

Especially since, as far as I can tell, this is built on Python. So you already have a working Python installation at least.

View on HN

Creator of Cicada here. I created a new DSL because I wanted a more declarative, expressive, yet capable file format, something like Dockerfile but with programming capabilities. In terms of "just running commands", Python (or any other language) is just as good if not better.

Where Cicada shines though is that it makes higher level concepts like conditional execution and caching front end center, so you can describe more with less lines. The DSL itself isn't very mature at the moment, but I plan on adding stuff like allow/deny capabilities and more in the future.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com