ShapeRank is new programming language under development at F5. ShapeRank is targeted at data analytics, machine learning and reactive programming. ShapeRank is purely functional and statically typed. All ShapeRank values are multi-dimensional streams, and all operations are automatically lifted to process such streams in parallel. This lifting originates in the APL language family, and is known as rank-polymorphism. ShapeRank is unusual in that it extends rank-polymorphism to streams.
The current ShapeRank prototype is implemented in Newspeak. The goal is to produce a complete reference implementation of ShapeRank, in order to validate the design.
The reference implementation is currently under development. Key features are lacking or buggy. This is very early stage development. We intend to do the bulk of the work in the open, in this repository.
Once the reference implementation is complete, we intend to build an industrial-strength, high performance version using a systems programming language such as Rust.
For a quick overview of the language, you can check out these talks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1FoTYnJxeY&feature=youtu.be an early overview of the project (by now, somewhat out of date, especially the material on types). 38 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMO-CFlbYf8. A quick (15 minute) discussion the reactive aspects of ShapeRank.
You can also read the related in-progress paper
ShapeRank runs on the web, so you can start with a live, interactive introduction to ShapeRank.
Or see a more detailed presentation.
Strictly speaking, there is no installation needed, as all ShapeRank software runs in a web browser. If you want to go beyond the demos, you can clone this repository at the location of your choice:
git clone https://github.com/f5devcentral/shapeRank.git
You can then load the ShapeRank sources into the online Newspeak IDE.
However, if you wish to contribute to ShapeRank, you will likely prefer to install the IDE locally. See the next section, Development, for details.
As the project progresses, ShapeRank specific web based tools for developing and deploying new ShapeRank code should become available.
To contribute to ShapeRank, you will want to download the the Newspeak web IDE. Make sure you are getting the web IDE, not the old Smalltalk based version!
Note that the IDE app's are unsigned, so you will need to explicitly force the OS to open them the first time.
ShapeRank also comes with a Dockerfile, which can be used to build the source. We use NPM to make it easy to build ShapeRank, so make sure you have Docker Desktop and NodeJS installed.
Use npm i to install dependencies.
Use npm run build to build ShapeRank. (Make sure you have Docker running.)
For support, please open a GitHub issue. Note that ShapeRank is research project, not a product.
Please refer to the F5 DevCentral Community Code of Conduct.
npm ito install dependencies.npm run demo_01to run the C build demo.
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