Introduce while loops

[elixir-nx]

Introduce while loops

[josevalim]

After thinking more about this, I suggest for us to start with while only and make it clear it is a sequential construct. We can explore something like for in the future.

[seanmor5]

I am a fan of futhark so I think adding their style of looping is definitely an interesting idea. In terms of adding map, map_with_index, reduce and reduce_with_index, I am confident in being able to do that with EXLA.

Understanding that the for+:reduce concept might be foreign/unfamiliar to new users, I am curious if maybe it's a good idea to include both options for users who want their code to be closer to what a normal Elixir program might support?

[josevalim]

@seanmor5 that's a good question. I went back to Furhark code and I realized the support two looping constructs: for and while:

loop x while x >= 1
loop x for y in expr

If we want to support both loops, then it means this is not quite the same as for+:reduce. I think we can support while loops like this:

loop x, x >= 0 do
  x - 1
end

So I would rather proceed with loop and then if people think this is a good idea, we can even consider having it as part of Elixir?