Using Coalton to implement a quantum compiler (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Using Coalton to implement a quantum compiler (2022)

coalton-lang.github.io

57 pointsandsoitis4 comments

Coalton remains in active development and is used at a couple companies. Like a handful of others in recent history, it's a language that's designed and implemented directly against the needs of either actual products or (PLT-unrelated) research initiatives, so things like performance aren't an afterthought.

There are a few software engineering positions in the Boston, MA area to work on the Coalton compiler (algebraic type systems, optimizations, high-performance computing, dev tools, ...) and to use it for autonomous, firm realtime systems (unrelated to quantum). Email in profile if interested.

Is Coalton compatible broadly compatible with the features of CIEL? I've been interested in getting into CL, and CIEL seems like a very nice batteries-included way to do that. But Coalton is also quite interesting and brings some features that may be useful. But I'm such a novice in this particular space (I'm mostly a Julia user with Python and some elisp) that I can't quite tell. Obviously I could start learning CL using CIEL and later play with Coalton but was just wondering if you knew how they may play together.

Coalton can be used wherever (almost any) Common Lisp can be used: mixed in, side by side, exclusively, as an library, etc.

CIEL doesn't presently ship any native Coalton interfaces, so all invocations of CIEL within Coalton code would have to be in a "lisp" form, which is like Rust's "unsafe".

    (define (some-coalton-function arg)
      ;; break out to Lisp
      (lisp String (arg)
        ...CIEL stuff here...))

On ordinary safety settings, the String declaration on the Lisp code will be checked at runtime so that wrong types don't leak back into the surrounding/calling Coalton code.

Conversely, Coalton code can be freely used within Common Lisp code regardless of whether it uses CIEL.

A couple bits of past discussion:

Using Coalton to Implement a Quantum Compiler - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36413832 - June 2023 (1 comment)

Using Coalton to Implement a Quantum Compiler - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32741928 - Sept 2022 (1 comment)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com