Show HN: Lambda 0.2 – a func language better than TypeScrip, jq and jQuery

9 points

2 months ago

What's your tool chain for data and document processing? - jq is great, but limited to JSON; and jQuery limited to HTML; templating systems get messy for non-trivial logic; TypeScript lacks pattern matching and schema support.

So I built Lambda — an expressive functional language that combines the power of Lisp, TypeScript, and many DSLs like jq, jQuery, RelaxNG, etc.

It has a lightweight 9 MB runtime, built from scratch in C/C++, that provides an end-to-end document processing pipeline (parse → validate/query/transform → layout → render/view).

Internally, Lambda parse different input formats (Markdown, Wiki, HTML/XML, JSON/YAML/TOML/CSV, LaTeX, PDF, …) into a unified Lambda/Mark node tree, then transformed with Lambda scripts, validated with schemas, and then rendered via the Radiant HTML/CSS/SVG layout and rendering engine.

Repo (with examples and demos): https://github.com/henry-luo/lambda

I’d love feedback on: where this could actually be useful in your workflows; language design (what feels unnecessary vs. missing); etc.

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