I'm really impressed by what Mint can accomplish

[hamidb80]

Hey, it's been a few days and I had really fun time playing with Mint.

my Question

1. have you seen similar features in other programming languages or you've thought them all by yourself? ( specially features like import-less code ).
2. I wonder is there something like Mint for backend?

what I'm impressed by

import-less code

every piece of code has unique identifier, no need to import it.

all in one

localization

no more shitty NPM libraries all of them have different APIs trying to implemented just a super simple task.

even more, someone has to wrap that library and port it to React, Vue, Angular, etc just to make the damn localization work.

Styling

Ahhh I'm really sick of packages like styles-component etc etc

State Management

this is the most stupid part of React, Vue, ... that they just pretend this problem does not exist.

• wanna subscribe to a state? WTF just write connect Module exposing {s1, s2, ... }. no more another state-management library like RxJs etc etc just to provide simple subscribe API.
• wanna change a state? even more WTF just next {state: newValue}. no more useState or ref and JS Proxy APIs, all trying to mimic the behaviour and still stupidly failing after all these years. even worse you'll find yourself shooting into your foot after debugging hours and hope that all the debugging utilities that genius people have produced would work ...

Routing

simple routing, you can do it all in one file, no need to hit another npm install ...

Your code makes sense

the best part of Mint is that almost all of your code is actually doing something useful. no boilerplate to setup localization, state-management, routing, etc etc. wanna escape this problem? good luck trusting AI to manage and produce these boilerplates for you! huh.

Build speed

I develop Mint application on a Ubuntu OS in Virtual Machine installed on windows + limited CPU cores, and I still get superior performance compared to separated Ubuntu OS with full access to hardware with Vite ( the fastest frontend bundler I guess?? )

Final Words

I know Mint has some limitation and it is not mature as other solutions, but it's very promising ...

[gdotdesign]

Thank you for your summary, those are the exact reasons why I've created the language 😍

As for the questions:

1. There are two inspirations for import-less code:
   • There are no imports in OCaml as far as I can tell https://ocaml.org/docs/modules. Every file is a module which is loaded when you reference them. This was the point it clicked in my head that we write some many import statements unnecessarily.
   • Ruby and Crystal has a similar feel to them. You require a file once, and everything in that file is available in the global namespace.
2. The closest language in syntax and semantics is Gleam. I recently started a side-project in it (as the backend), and it's a pleasure to work with.
   • Same type system and very similar syntax. Some libraries probably can be 1 to 1 ported.
   • It does have imports, unfortunately.
   • I wish it would compile to a single native binary, but it only compiles to either Erlang or JavaScript.

I develop Mint application on a Ubuntu OS in Virtual Machine installed on windows + limited CPU cores, and I still get superior performance compared to separated Ubuntu OS with full access to hardware with Vite ( the fastest frontend bundler I guess?? )

I guess it's because in the JavaScript ecosystem, there are a lot more files to compile (hundreds or thousands, depending on the project). The biggest Mint codebase I have is ~111 thousand LOC with 308 files, it builds in ~3 seconds 😁

Windows support is promising. I was able to build Mint on Windows 11 natively :) All core tests are passing so If you feel adventurous you can try to build it yourself from the windows branch.