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|
+++
date = 2023-02-02
title = "Exploring the Hare Programming Language"
description = "A retrospective on my first time using the Hare Programming Language."
+++
## A Quick Note
By no means am I a professional developer, so this post will be rather
short. I won't be going into depth on the specification or anything
that technical.
Instead, I will simply be talking about how I (a relatively basic
hobbyist programmer) have been playing with Hare and what intrigues me
about the language.
## Hare
The [Hare](https://harelang.org) programming language is a
straightforward language that should look familiar if you've ever
programmed with C, Rust, or other languages that aim to build software
at the system-level.
The Hare homepage states the following:
> Hare is a systems programming language designed to be simple, stable,
> and robust. Hare uses a static type system, manual memory management,
> and minimal runtime. It is well-suited to writing operating systems,
> system tools, compilers, networking software, and other low-level,
> high performance tasks.
I have found this all to be true while playing with it for the first
time today. In the next few sections, I'm going to walk through my
installation and first program.
### Installation
I'm currently running Alpine Linux on my Thinkpad, so the installation
was quite easy as there is a package for Hare in the `apk`
repositories.
```sh
doas apk add hare hare-doc
```
However, I was able to install Hare from scratch on Fedora Linux a short
while ago, which was also very easy to do. If you need further
instructions and Hare doesn't have a package on your system, take a
look at the [Hare Installation](https://harelang.org/installation/)
page.
### Creating a Test Project
In order to play with the language, I created
[hare-test](https://git.sr.ht/~cmc/hare-projects) and will be putting
any of my Hare-related adventures in here.
> **Update:** I also created a simple Hare program for creating a file
> from user input:
> [files.ha](https://git.sr.ht/~cmc/hare-projects/tree/main/item/files/files.ha)
Luckily, Hare doesn't require any complex set-up tools or build
environment. Once you have Hare installed, you simply need to create a
file ending with `.ha` and you can run a Hare program.
I created a file called `rgb.ha` in order to test out the
random number generation and passing parameters between functions.
```sh
nano rgb.ha
```
Within this file, I was able to easily import a few of the [standard
library modules](https://harelang.org/tutorials/stdlib/):
`fmt`, `math::random`, and `datetime`.
With these modules, I created two functions:
1. `main`: This function calls the `generate_rgb`
function and then prints out the returned values.
2. `generate_rgb`: This function uses the current Unix epoch
time to generate a pseudo-random value and uses this value to create
three more random values between 0 and 255. These three numbers
represent a color in RGB format.
> **Note**: Some syntax coloring may look odd, as Zola currently
> doesn't have a syntax highlighting theme for Hare. Instead, I'm
> using the C theme, which may not be exactly accurate when coloring the
> code below.
```c
use datetime;
use fmt;
use math::random;
export fn main() void = {
const rgb = generate_rgb();
fmt::printfln("RGB: ({}, {}, {})", rgb[0], rgb[1], rgb[2])!;
};
fn generate_rgb() []u64 = {
// Use the current Unix epoch time as the seed value
let datetime = datetime::epochunix(&datetime::now());
// Generate initial pseudo-random value
// You must cast the datetime from int to u64
let x = random::init(datetime: u64);
// Generate RGB values between (0, 255) using pseudo-random init value
let r = random::u64n(&x, 255);
let g = random::u64n(&x, 255);
let b = random::u64n(&x, 255);
// Structure data as array and return
let rgb_array: [3]u64 = [r, g, b];
return rgb_array;
};
```
### Running a Program
Once you have a Hare file written and ready to run, you simply need to
run it:
```sh
hare run file.ha
```
You can also compile the program into an executable:
```sh
hare build -o example file.ha
./example
```
### Initial Thoughts
1. Documentation Improvements Would Help
While I was able to piece everything together eventually, the
biggest downfall right now in Hare's documentation. For such a new
project, the documentation is in a great spot. However, bare
specifications don't help as much as a brief examples section
would.
For example, it took me a while to figure out what the
`u64n` function was looking for. I could tell that it
took two parameters and the second was my max value (255), but
couldn't figure out what the first value should be. Eventually, I
inspected the `random.ha` file in the [Hare source
code](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare/tree/master/item/math/random/random.ha)
and found the test suite that helped me discover that it needed an
`init()` value in the form of `&var`.
2. More Basic Modules
This is another point that comes from Hare being new and awaiting
more contributions, but there are some basic functions that I would
personally enjoy seeing in Hare, such as one to convert decimal
(base 10) values to hexadecimal (base 16).
If I'm feeling comfortable with my math, I may work on the list of
functions I want and see if any can make it into the Hare source
code.
3. Overall Thoughts
Overall, I actually really enjoy Hare. It's not as tedious to get a
project up and running as Rust, but it's also simpler and more
user-friendly than learning C. I am going to continue playing with
it and see if I can make anything of particular value.
|
