Sunday, April 8, 2018

DDC renamed to the Disco Discus Compiler

A few weeks ago we renamed DDC to the Disco Discus Compiler (was the Disciplined Disciple Compiler). Discus is the name of the language. Disco is another word that was added because all the best compilers have three words in their name.

The system we have now is quite different to the old "Disciple" language. Discus uses capabilities instead of latent effects in its type system, and the latter was one of the main features of Disciple. The implementation of DDC has also been completely rewritten. Not a single line of code exists in the compiler that was part of the first DDC / Disciple release.

The reasons for choosing "Disco Discus" are the following:
  1. A Discus fish makes a nice, friendly logo.
    1. The logo is eminently "plushable", meaning that one can imagine manufacturing a plush toy (stuffed soft toy) with the same theme. Stickers are also an option, as are t-shirts.
    2. "Disco" partly recalls a quote of Simon Peyton Jones in his paper Tackling the Awkward Squad: "In the programming-language world one rule of survival is simple: dance or die."
    3. The pattern of the "Blue Discus" fish variety featured in the logo looks a bit like a mirror ball.
    4. Both "Disco" and "Discus" start with a "D" so we can keep the acronym DDC.
    Let it be known that Amos Robinson was the first to mention "Disco" as a viable name. The language itself was almost called "Disco", but "Discus" was chosen as the primary label due to its higher plushability.

    Another option was to have called the language Tetra, as that word was already used to label an intermediate language in the compiler. "Tetra" recalled the four base kinds in the language: Data, Region, Effect, and Capability. We went so far as to try to register tetra-lang.org, but it was already taken by another fine language called Tetra. This is for the better.

    We have now completed renaming all the web assets to reflect the new name. Check out the website at http://discus-lang.org/

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