JSON and YAML work great for passing data between languages.

However, sometimes, I have a pure function like y = mx + b, that I would like to pass between languages (for making plots).

What operators should be available? I think jsonnet’s standard library(skip to the math operators) is the perfect example of a useful set of operations that could be shared across basically all programming languages. The operations would take/return json values rather than working with language-specific data types.

My question is does such a language exist already?

Close candidates:

  • Dhall and jsonnet are pure languages that generate json. But AFAIK they can’t actually serialize pure functions. They can only use pure functions as a shorthand for generating json. I want to actually save/send functions over the wire.
  • jeffhykinOP
    2·
    9 months ago

    I think that’s actually a pretty good idea.

    I could, right now, create the function in wasm, put it in yaml with a !wasm tag (or maybe a more specific tag) then the deserializer could detect it, load it, and wrap it in a function.

      • jeffhykinOP
        1·
        9 months ago

        I would actually intentionally not want any ABI like wasi or emscriptem. I’d like the serialization format to not care about the platform at all (e.g. the function should run the same on any operating system, browser, embedded device, etc).

          • jeffhykinOP
            1·
            9 months ago

            I think maybe this is just a communication issue and we actually agree on the details.

            Wasi and emscriptem from the ABI link, AFAIK, are basically wrappers to impure tools; console log, file system access, sockets, etc. For my usecase, I dont want the serialized functions to have access to those interfaces.

            That aside, lets say we serilized (m: f32, x: f32, b:f32): f32 => m*x + b. Yes, there will need to be some conversion layer, like converting python floats into wasm f32 floats and converting the f32 output back to python float. And stuff like javascript not having ints, could cause some weirdness. Maybe thats the ABI you’re talking about. Since that conversion basically already exists for every language that supports wasm, I didnt really think of it as an ABI, but you might be right that techically it is an ABI.

            I suppose a real ABI would be needed if the wasm function wanted to manipulate complex types like hashmaps or arrays.

            The serialization format could just be the bytes of a wasm file stored inside of a yaml file in base64. I’m not sure if yaml or utf8 would be considered a ABI. But basically the bytes would be loaded as a wasm module, then the wasm function inside the module would become value for that yaml key. The wasm function would be auto-wrapped by the language’s default inter-op layer for wasm functions.