G
YouTube TikTok Games
Ant

Appearance

Ant is a typed language with errors as values, pipes for data, and goroutines. ​

Data flows left to right. ​

A pipe passes the value on its left as the first argument on its right. A block with x is a lambda.

ant
let result = [5, 2, 8, 1]
  | Array.filter({ x > 2 })
  | Array.map({ x * 10 })
  | Array.sort()
println(result)
txt
[50, 80]

Errors are values. ​

A function that can fail returns a Result. try hands an error up to the caller. Nothing is thrown.

ant
func load(path: string): Result[Json.Value, Error] {
  let text = try File.read(path)
  Json.parse(text)
}

let config = load("config.json")
if config is Err { println(config.error.message) }
txt
open config.json: no such file or directory

Fan out on goroutines. ​

Goroutines are cheap, and any function can start one. Parallel.map runs a function over a list on goroutines, at most limit at once, and returns when all of them are done.

ant
func slowSquare(n: int, ctx: Context): int {
  Time.sleep(100ms, ctx)
  n * n
}

let squares = Parallel.map([1, 2, 3, 4], slowSquare, limit: 3)
println(squares)
txt
[1, 4, 9, 16]

HTML is an expression. ​

Markup is a value of type Html, checked like any other expression. Text interpolated into it is escaped, so a page is safe by default.

ant
type Post = { title: string, url: string }

func link(post: Post): Html {
  <a href={post.url}>{post.title}</a>
}

let post = Post{ title: "Hello <world>", url: "/hello" }
println(<p>{link(post)}</p>)
txt
<p><a href="/hello">Hello &lt;world&gt;</a></p>

Your editor already knows Ant. ​

The language server brings completion, hover, go to definition, rename, and diagnostics to VS Code, IntelliJ, and Neovim. The debugger sets breakpoints and shows values, and ant fmt formats on save.