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Espruino is a JavaScript interpreter for low-power Microcontrollers. This site is both a support community for Espruino and a place to share what you are working on.
@dferyance
So when I first heard of the Espruino, I quickly dismissed it. There are plenty of good dynamic-typed programming languages that I like better than JavaScript. I am not a C-only kind of person for embedded, but JavaScript just sounded lame.
However, I thought of one big advantage of JavaScript -- lots of languages compile to it. Due to being a limited embedded device, I figure something like emscripten is out of the question. FunScript is a F# to JavaScript compiler that doesn't work the same way a lot of other compilers work (for better and worse). It doesn't treat JavaScript as an assembly language. It essentially does a syntax translation replacing one language's features with another through pre-defined patterns and macros. The resultant F# code is very verbose but pretty close to how someone would write it if a human translated it.
I was able to get some basic FunScript programs running on the Espruino without much difficulty. The semi-colon generation rules aren't quite the same. I have to add an extra one to the end of the program and sometimes I get a warning about too many. At least for the simple things I tried, it works really well.
I just wanted to share my positive experience. I have run F# on full Linux ARM boards (with Mono) but never something so light-weight before. There are those .Net Micro boards but they don't support F#. While I initially snubbed JavaScript, it proved to be just the ticket for doing F# on embedded.
I searched the forums and didn't see any mention of F#. Anyone else try something similar? I am very new to Espruino, any limitations I am likely to run into?