Don't support "truthy" or "falsey" values. Any if/while/etc conditions must only have boolean type, causing an error if the value is any other type.
Ask HN: New Programming Language?
41–50 of 99 posts
Re: Ask HN: New Programming Language?
#421. Placing language interop as a high priority via extendible interop framework. Right now if you look for interop chances are you’re only gonna get A—>B bindings (eg Python->Rust), not even A B. I’d want something where, for all A,B in the set of supported languages, A B interop exists. This ideal language could then have like some glue module to allow that. 2. Extensible reflection system like in Python 3. 1 offici…
What exactly virtualenv adds to table that justifies it?
I have used c#, and javascript. And not felt any issues by lack of virtualenv.
I know python need it because otherwise it does not support project level modules. But that is a python only problem
Re: Ask HN: New Programming Language?
#43If someone would combine the syntax of Ruby (it's fun to read and write) with the performance and static binaries of Go, I think it would be very popular. I would like to enjoy writing Go as much as I enjoy writing Ruby. But Ruby apps are slow and hard to deploy. Combining their strengths would be great IMHO.
I believe this is what Crystal [0] is trying to achieve. Though I’ve hardly used Ruby or Crystal, so can’t say how well it’s fairing on that goal.
Re: Ask HN: New Programming Language?
#44Combine the speed benefits of C++ with the freedom of lisp. I don't think it's possible.
Compiled Common Lisp is fast enough for me.
Re: Ask HN: New Programming Language?
#45It's been a while i'm thinking about one: A Relational General Purpose Language. Not table oriented like SQL, but more OOP/Type oriented, I'm not sure exactly how I want it to be, but surely not table oriented. No concurrency or async to worry about, you write the relations (exactly like you dont worry about SQL on concurrency while writing an SQL query). Like a JIT/DB Engine, it has a runtime that analyze the data p…
Isn't that LINQ ? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-g...
Not being familiar with LINQ, does it solve SQL's composability problems?
I love SQL for what it can do, but I am constantly annoyed at how inconsistent it is and how terrible it is for generating queries via software. It feels ripe for a replacement that is semantically similar but syntactically different.
Re: Ask HN: New Programming Language?
#46Because we can't make people agree whether punctuation or meaningful whitespace is better: I'd like something that you can view and edit in your preferred syntax style. It would be stored in SCM and run/compiled in some intermediate format that losslessly transforms to the "work mode" and back.
Re: Ask HN: New Programming Language?
#47I would take SML, freshen it up with some conveniences inspired by Haskell and OCaml, and add a mode with region-based memory management only, so it can be used without a GC. This so there is a simple but principled language targeting low-level programming. Rust is nice, but it has so many features and a syntax aimed at C++/Java folks.
SuccessorML[1], 1ML[2], etc. are pretty close to this in spirit. I've been trying to keep up with the publications around the future of ML, but academic research moves kinda slowly. I'm hopeful we'll see a new definition of Standard ML this decade. I'd tend to agree SML is a great choice -- SML-1997 is still ahead of many languages that came well after it in both features and usability.
Re: Ask HN: New Programming Language?
#48Gods no. No more. We already have hundreds (if not thousands) of programming languages for pretty much every niche out there (not to mention languages so flexible they can be adapted to meet any new niche). What this kind of question tells me is that folks are tired of solving business cases, and long for technical challenges. There's nothing inherently wrong with this longing, but we have enough programming language…
I imagine if this question was asked in 2010 then there would've been a similar answer from someone. And if no new programming languages were created at that point then we wouldn't have gotten Rust.
A sacrifice I'm willing to make if it meant we hadn’t gotten the partially supported pile of dung that is Dart. For every potential gem, there are piles of ossified crap.
EDIT: Plus, Rust’s initial debut was mid-2010, so it would have been a coin flip chance at worst.
Re: Ask HN: New Programming Language?
#49Some ideas...
Language that represent numbers as rationals and always gives you precise calculations (unless you explicitly want to round them up).
Language that can tell apart 1 meter from 1 second (units like in Frink lang).
Language that has various data structures with consistent interface (like Scala) up to and including relational tables and graphs.
That has structural composable declarative query language that can reach into arbitrary nesting of those data structures with features that allow to build indexes to perform those queries efficiently.
That has features for serializing those structures and indexes into files and using them live from disk instead of ram. (why not have 1TB set in my program?).
Language that can pick a data structure or combination of them that provide capabilities you specify. For example if I want a structure that is fast at inserting elements, checking their presence and taking smallest element (with respect to some measure) I should get sorted linked list combined with a set.
Re: Ask HN: New Programming Language?
#50Gods no. No more. We already have hundreds (if not thousands) of programming languages for pretty much every niche out there (not to mention languages so flexible they can be adapted to meet any new niche). What this kind of question tells me is that folks are tired of solving business cases, and long for technical challenges. There's nothing inherently wrong with this longing, but we have enough programming language…
> I hope you can humour me and not challenge the assumptions baked into the question. That's a separate, if interesting, exercise.
Challenging and questioning the assumptions behind a question makes for much more interesting fodder than a dozen lists of context-free requirements.