This is the first I've heard of that project, but based on a quick skim, I can point out a few differences between it and Runiq - although the two are certainly similar in that they execute over a very simple plain-array-based AST. (Clearly miniMAL and Runiq were created with different ultimate aims in mind, so any fair comparison ends there. :) )
- Runiq is fully designed around async. (At first glance I'm unsure how you would express, say, an HTTP request or file I/O in miniMAL - i.e., anything which in JS would require a callback.) In Runiq it would look something like this:
; assuming 'print' and 'read-file' are defined in the DSL... ;
(print (read-file "foo.txt"))
- Runiq has no (built-in) JavaScript interop, although it would be trivial to add that feature via Runiq's DSL-building API. I specifically avoided adding any type of sytnax to talk to JS directly because I wanted Runiq to be a safe sandbox by default, with the option to add "dangerous" functions easily if need be.
But, that's super cool and I wish I'd come across that earlier!
Runiq more or less does this translation:
source: (hack (the) (planet!))
ast: ["hack", ["the"], ["planet!"]]
reduce order: "the" "planet!" -> "hack"
"hack": function(a,b,cb){...}, // add numbers
"the": function(cb){...}, // return 1
"planet!": function(cb){...}, // return 2
-> ["hack", ["the"], ["planet!"]]
-> ["hack", 1, 2]
-> [3]
-> 3