15:51 <marler8997> hello, heard of the pony language and decided to take a closer look

15:52 <marler8997> what are the plans for providing libraries compatible with older versions of visual studio...also are there plans to support other linkers on windows (i.e. LLVM linker)?

16:01 <SeanTAllen> we want to move to using the llvm linker. that is a plan.

16:02 <SeanTAllen> there are no plans for providing libraries to support older versions of visual studio but if someone wanted to start supporting older versions, we would support that.

16:02 <SeanTAllen> pony is a volunteer driven project, so there's lots of room for people to jump in and take things like that on.

16:02 <SeanTAllen> also, welcome marler8997

16:04 <marler8997> ah ok... that makes sense

16:04 <marler8997> going through the tutorial right now...pretty interesting stuff

16:05 <SeanTAllen> we are here if you have questions

16:05 <SeanTAllen> we aim to answer all questions however, we arent always actively looking at IRC.

16:05 <marler8997> I have a bunch of questions but I'm sure most will be answered by the tutorial :)

16:05 <SeanTAllen> so, if you ask a question and come back, check the logs to see if someone answered your question.

16:06 <marler8997> I do want to ask what metaprogramming facilities are available? CTFE? Mixins? Templates?

16:07 <SeanTAllen> no templates, no macros at this time.

16:07 <marler8997> ctfe?

16:07 <SeanTAllen> eventually we want type safe, hygenic macros but that is much further down the road

16:08 <marler8997> compile-time code execution?

16:08 <SeanTAllen> that's a macro

16:08 <SeanTAllen> so no

16:09 <marler8997> how long has this language been going?

16:09 <SeanTAllen> that really depends on how you define that

16:10 <marler8997> just wanted to know a bit of history...

16:10 <SeanTAllen> here's a bit of that: https://www.ponylang.org/blog/2017/05/an-early-history-of-pony/

16:10 <marler8997> community is very important when it comes to new languages so I wanted to get the lay of the land

16:11 <marler8997> oh you're on slack as well

16:12 <SeanTAllen> ?

16:12 <SeanTAllen> slack?

16:13 <marler8997> > Sean gave me an outline on Slack based on stuff I’ve told him, so here goes.

16:14 <SeanTAllen> There's no public pony slack

16:14 <SeanTAllen> At the time, Sylvan and I had a slack where we would talk.

16:15 <SeanTAllen> Now we mostly use whatsapp

16:15 <SeanTAllen> Sylvan and I have known each other since we were teenagers.

16:15 <marler8997> oh ok...I'm coming from the D community...we have a slack account and the core contributes hang out there

16:19 <SeanTAllen> ive never used D but its always loooked interesting

16:20 <marler8997> the type system is a bit anemic...but it's metaprogramming is unparalleled

16:20 <marler8997> the metaprogramming is so good that you can almost make up for the type system...

16:25 <SeanTAllen> do you do D programming for a living?

16:26 <marler8997> I use it a bit at work...but most of my D work is personal

16:28 <SeanTAllen> well, i hope you enjoy your dabbling with Pony and perhaps get hooked enough to join the community and contribute. I'm almost done making lunch then spending the day with my wife so I'll be away for a while but I'll check back this evening to see if you had any questions that I can answer (assuming someone else didn't get to them first)

16:28 <marler8997> ok, thanks for the welcome

16:46 <marler8997> had to build ponyc from source (binaries couldn't find visual studio)....wow it looks like the compiler is already designed to be a library from the get go...very nice