Hy is a dialect of the Lisp programming language. It is designed to interact with the language Python by translating expressions into Python's abstract syntax tree (AST).[2][3] Hy was introduced at Python Conference (PyCon) 2013 by Paul Tagliamonte.[4]
Similar to Kawa's and Clojure's mapping of s-expressions onto the Java virtual machine (JVM),[5] Hy is meant to operate as a transparent Lisp front end to Python's abstract syntax.[6] Lisp allows operating on code as data (metaprogramming). Thus, Hy can be used to write domain-specific languages.[7] Hy also allows Python libraries, including the standard library, to be imported and accessed alongside Hy code with a compiling[note 1] step converting the data structure of both into Python's AST.[note 2][8][9][10]
From the language documentation:[11]