Waxolotl – A small language that compiles to WebAssembly text format | Hacker News Reader

Waxolotl – A small language that compiles to WebAssembly text format

github.com

101 pointskeepamovin16 comments

If you combined this with JIT compilation and a macro system you could make a pretty nice performant browser-ready lisp that produces small code.

The demo page is great. Really nice to see such rich and fun examples.

It's crazy that even the simplest Hello World translates to 1191 lines of WebAssembly text format (without comments and empty lines). Compare it to only 18 lines with AssemblyScript: https://github.com/torch2424/wasm-by-example/blob/master/exa...

Can anyone explain what this adds on top of wax?

Directly compiling to WASM.

Is this pronounced Wax-a-lot-l or Wax-o-lowt?

I presume it rhymes with the fish.

Axolotl are salamanders.

In Nahuatl it would be “wa-sha-lot” iirc. The l is silent when the end of the word ends in “tl” and x is a “sh” sound.

Yes, see wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl

That's what I was trying to reference, but I left the X in the English "Wax" [wax][alotl].

I am very curious what the author intended though

> I am very curious what the author intended though

I am assuming wæksəlɒtəl, that's how most pronounce the animal

Not silent, but not either of the L sounds in English, /l/ as in lever and and /ɫ/ as in trouble. It's the ll in Welsh, /ɬ/ in IPA. If you pronounce it /t/ you'll be closer than /tɫ/, like bottle.

A /t/ from the back of your throat and not the tongue against the teeth I think?

Fun fact, x is an sh sound because that's how it was in medieval Spanish around the time Spaniards got there and wrote down the words. Around this same time is when the Old Spanish sh sound was shifting to the value it has in the word México and later a spelling reform changed it to J or g before i and e (except eg. in a bunch of mexican place names which retrained old spelling)

I believe in other Iberian languages such as Portuguese, Catalan and Basque, the sh sound is spelled with X.

I read it as "wax - o - lotool". A little difficult to pronounce in any case.

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