Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:24): Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:24):I think we can step around this completely if we had a roc tutor type of experience
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:24):Kind of a little mini app called from the roc tool that on-boards the user
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:27):I guess I could just create roclings :tears:
Notification Bot (Jan 17 2025 at 14:34):3 messages were moved here from #ideas > "aka": APIs with multiple names by Anthony Bullard.
Anton (Jan 17 2025 at 14:37):Kind of a little mini app called from the roc tool that on-boards the user
Would the onboarding be completely in the terminal?
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:37):Well that's one idea
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:38):The other is roclings - A project like ziglings/rustlings which is definitely terminal driven (with a cli tool), but the editing happens in the user's editor
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:39):If we had working wasm generation for real and could create a web platform, then you could imagine it even being in the browser
Anton (Jan 17 2025 at 14:42):Yeah, I like in-browser on-boarding.
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:42):We gotta fix whatever the issue is with gen-wasm
Anton (Jan 17 2025 at 14:42):Yeah, I like in-browser on-boarding.
It does not seem like a priority in the near future though
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:42):No, that's why I like the terminal approach
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:43):It was the way I learned Zig and it so _very_ fun
Anton (Jan 17 2025 at 14:43):I need to try that :)
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:43):You should
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:43):And we can even maybe do it better when we have Sam's ... TODO syntax
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:44):Because right now you would need to commit invalid syntax for the "holes" to fill in
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:52):And example "porting" of exercise 001 from Ziglings:
# Oh no, this is supposed to print "Hello world!" but it needs
# your help.
#
# In Roc, the main function needs to be given to the platform
# for it to be executed.
#
# A function is provided to the platform in the header like so:
#
# ```roc
# app [function_name] {
# pf: "https://..../basic-cli"
# }
# ```
#
# Perhaps knowing this will help solve the errors we're getting
# with this little program?
#
app [...] {
pf: "https://..../basic-cli"
}
import Stdout
main = |_|
Stdout.line!("Hello world!")
Of course, some thought needs to be put into the narrative above, but I think it works well
Norbert Hajagos (Jan 17 2025 at 14:53):I think having an in-browser experience is nice and the wasm compiler is a superpower for that (at least for cost - savings on server compute) . I enjoyed going through the go tour, even though I was much more comfortable within my neovim setup. The parts were so small, I wasn't bothered to write it in the browser.
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:54):The Go tour is good. But we don't have the resources I think to host a roc compiler service for potentially 10s of people concurrently
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:55):And then all the setup for a good editing experience etc
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:55):You could have an in-browser experience that's just "We explain and show a concept, and then you fill in the blanks and then we check it matches a predetermined result" system though
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:57):That might even dovetail with the new tutorial that Richard wants to build (I have no idea on the specifics of that idea though)
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:57):You could even set that up to be completely (actually) serverless
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 14:58):If everything is very constrained and well structured. But that means it will be a tutorial on stilts
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 15:01):But overall I think I personally would like to work on a Ziglings-style project. Implemented in 100% Roc of course
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 15:02):I've worked on the compiler a _lot_ recently, and the docs and website. I really need to inject some Roc into my veins so I remember what I'm working for :smile:
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 15:37):I'm going to move forward and start work on this in an unofficial capacity
Richard Feldman (Jan 17 2025 at 16:27):Anthony Bullard said:
The Go tour is good. But we don't have the resources I think to host a roc compiler service for potentially 10s of people concurrently
it's possible for the roc compiler to run completely in the browser via wasm. Right now only the repl can do this, but we could expand that to work with things like modules
Richard Feldman (Jan 17 2025 at 16:28):like the repl on the homepage is all wasm in the browser, and it's the full repl - same code base as roc repl on the CLI
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 16:30):Yep - there's just no effects
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 16:30):And you can't build a module, let alone an app
Richard Feldman (Jan 17 2025 at 16:30):in the repl yeah
Richard Feldman (Jan 17 2025 at 16:31):but we already separately have wasm platforms that run effects, e.g. https://bren077s.itch.io/rocci-bird
Richard Feldman (Jan 17 2025 at 16:31):so the only missing piece (still a substantial project, of course) is connecting up the ability for wasm platforms to be built in a wasm build of the compiler
Richard Feldman (Jan 17 2025 at 16:32):(and loading modules, of course)
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 16:46):Yep :-)
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 16:46):But I'm working on this CLI version.
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 16:46):After I scream at Sam for the weaver docs
Anton (Jan 17 2025 at 16:49):Oh no, we like Sam
Anton (Jan 17 2025 at 16:49):What's up with the docs, they look fine?
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 18:25):Skill issues more than likely, but I can’t get a very simple thing to compile
Anthony Bullard (Jan 17 2025 at 18:26):The opaque type docs seem to not get published since the type is not exposed
Sam Mohr (Jan 17 2025 at 18:32):Anthony Bullard said:
After I scream at Sam for the weaver docs
This is why I wear earplugs
Sam Mohr (Jan 17 2025 at 18:32):Let me know what I need to change
Richard Feldman (Jan 17 2025 at 21:27):Anthony Bullard said:
The opaque type docs seem to not get published since the type is not exposed
ugh, I have a branch which fixes this but it's kind of a mess and changes a bunch of things in docs, probably has a pile of merge conflicts at this point :grimacing:
Richard Feldman (Jan 17 2025 at 21:27):it's called can-docs if any brave souls want to delve into its depths
Sam Mohr (Jan 17 2025 at 21:30):If no one gets to it, I'll try to fold that into my can efforts
Sam Mohr (Jan 17 2025 at 21:30):After everything else
Richard Feldman (Jan 17 2025 at 21:32):if you want to do it in the new can, we should talk about how it should be done - I'd do it differently when building it from scratch than what's on that branch :big_smile:
Sam Mohr (Jan 17 2025 at 21:33):Okay, I'd expect it won't get touched for a few months, meaning it's guaranteed to be done in whatever the new way would be since we'll hopefully be done with the rework by then
Sam Mohr (Jan 17 2025 at 21:33):We can sync whenever on that
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 20:02):I've got the first version of roclings almost ready to go. Missing three things:
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 20:04):Here's the help screen
Screenshot 2025-01-18 at 2.03.50 PM.png
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 20:04):Checking all solutions
Screenshot 2025-01-18 at 2.04.15 PM.png
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 20:04):Moving on to the next exercise:
Screenshot 2025-01-18 at 2.04.36 PM.png
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 20:26):I think my goal is 30 exercises for now
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 20:44):Working out the correct order of operations is probably the hardest part. Here's my outline:
# Lesson outline
## 001. Platform basics and Stdout
## 002. Assigning values and String literals
## 003. Calling functions
## 004. Numbers and String interpolation
## 005. Arithmetic operations
## 006. If-then-else
## 007. Top-level defines
## 008. Defining a function
## 009. Records
## 010. Structural typing
## 011. Lists basics
## 012. Dicts
## 013. Sets
## 014. Annotating defs
## 015. Comments and Doc comments
## 016. Destructuring
## 017. Debugging
## 018. Enums
## 019. Enum collapse
## 020. Pattern Matching Tags
## 021. Pattern Matching Other Types
## 022. Effects
## 023. Handling Errors
## 024. Heterogeneous List
## 025. Optional record fields / default values
## 026. Crashing your program
## 027. Expect
## 028. Wildcards (_)
## 029. Abilities
## 030. Early returns
...
## 999. What to do next
There's probably some moving around that needs to done, and some of these could be broken down some more. We might end up closer to 40-45 real lessons at the end.
Sam Mohr (Jan 18 2025 at 20:47):I wonder if it's worth pulling something like a "learn you a Haskell" and doing "hello, world!" after the basics... Roc is a pure language that then works on top of platforms. We can encourage that thought pattern by starting with Roc the pure language for a few lessons
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 21:03):I really struggle with this
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 21:03):Because people are learning Roc to build applications
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 21:03):So a big part of me thinks of that starting with "repl-like" examples kind of goes against that
Richard Feldman (Jan 18 2025 at 21:04):my feeling is:
Richard Feldman (Jan 18 2025 at 21:04):it's good for people to know what the repl is, and also you gotta learn some basic syntax anyway that has nothing to do with I/O
Richard Feldman (Jan 18 2025 at 21:04):but yeah, people want to build stuff, so get to that ASAP after some syntax basics in the repl
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 21:10):Ok, I can move 002-006 up to the top
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 21:11):I never run or execute these examples when checking them (I just compare them to goldens)
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 21:11):Though I will have CI to check and test the goldens
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 21:39):By the way, Roc is now my favorite scripting language
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 21:45):Little vim magic and Roc scripting and BOOM, issues for all the exercises:
https://github.com/gamebox/roclings/issues
Richard Feldman (Jan 18 2025 at 22:13):Anthony Bullard said:
By the way, Roc is now my favorite scripting language
this is the first time I've seen anyone say this! :smiley:
That makes me super happy to hear - it's been a goal from the beginning to be great at that use case, and the language and ecosystem have gotten so much better in the past year...really awesome to see it turn that corner, thanks to all the awesome recent contributions! :heart_eyes:
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 22:33):PI is a big help here. Though there still are some rough edges, but overall just great. No type annotations or fuss, and I can just write stuff the way I want and I get great compiler feedback if I do something dumb
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 22:34):And I can just shebang the file, chmod it and run
Anthony Bullard (Jan 18 2025 at 22:35):I didn’t need an optimized build for a GH script since it’ll be slow anyway due to having to sleep in order to not make their api rate limiting mad
Anton (Jan 20 2025 at 10:11):You can use the GITHUB_TOKEN to avoid rate limit issues. This is how we use it for a basic-webserver wokrflow:
https://github.com/roc-lang/basic-webserver/blob/8c95d6e9d41aa93bc5b7dd205f83dfa721f90b87/.github/workflows/test_latest_release.yml#L35
https://github.com/roc-lang/basic-webserver/blob/8c95d6e9d41aa93bc5b7dd205f83dfa721f90b87/ci/test_latest_release.sh#L57C20-L57C131
The GITHUB_TOKEN is available by default in github workflows, you don't need to change any settings
Norbert Hajagos (Jan 20 2025 at 10:53):With Stdout coming after the basics (will come at num 6 after you moved the repl ones to the top), I would put Debugging right after that for num 7, so that you can continue with "But if you just want print debugging, you don't need to use Stdout. You can just call dbg myVar". I would use the dbg stmt during roclings if I were doing it, so the sooner it comes up the better I think. This enables others to experiment with the language more freely.
Last updated: Jun 16 2026 at 16:19 UTC