Herd Programming Language: A Pass-by-Value Interpreted Language for Hobby Projects
By
jcparkyn
The kind of bagel that ruins lesser bagels for you.
Summary
Herd is a hobby programming language where everything is pass-by-value, including complex data structures like lists and dictionaries. This design guarantees that functions cannot modify the original copies of data passed to them, eliminating side effects while still allowing local variable modification. The language is interpreted and designed for simplicity, with the creator explicitly noting it's not intended for production use.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledHerd is a simple interpreted programming language where everything is a value.
In Herd, everything is pass-by-value, including lists and dicts.
This means that when you pass a list or dict to a function, you can guarantee that the function won't modify your copy.
Disclaimer: This is a hobby language, and you probably shouldn't use it for anything important.
You can modify variables locally just like you would in an imperative language, but there will never be any side-effects on other copies of the value.
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