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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. The original description of Lisp included something like 10 primitives. That's it. Numerous examples of full-blown Lisps have been built from just those few primitives. One article I read even showed how arithmetic can be built from car and cdr.
Source? I’d love to read more about this
The down with syntax stuff is a particularly meaningless argument. Python probably has the most intuitive syntax of any "modern" language. I know many personal projects in python but very few professional ones. The lack of syntax makes python a great language for prototyping but a nightmare for scaling.
To choose which language you should use, I suggest figuring out the following:
- What problem are you solving? Web app, scalable service, low level processing?
- How correct does it have to be? Are bugs and edge cases okay to be tolerated? If not, I'd recommend a more functional language
- How many people are working on it? If many people are working on it, I'd recommend something with a strong type system.
- How "fast" does it have to be?
These aren't all the considerations but I really dislike the idea of modern vs antiquated. Languages will lots of usage are rarely outright bad (except javascript, I love typescript btw)
> The language for the 21st century should be business oriented, English-like and not dependent on native types. It is shocking to me how often the problem of "programming is difficult and time consuming and unintuitive" is to be resolved by "making programming languages more like English". The language is there as a tool to make programming easier! Do you know how many times I've taken someone's keyboard to type a t…
Slightly discussed here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18105644
- It would allow high-level programming like constraints statements a la Prolog.
- It would allow graphical block building a la PureData
- It would generate lower level version of these and allow a user to "zoom" into the generated code down to the machine code (or pseudo-code).
- It would allow to link from lower level imperative routines.
- It would have a fucking wysiwyg GUI editor.
- It would be designed to have a powerful IDE and a top-notch Intellisense. I believe these need to be thought at the design step of the language, not added later.
What's the purpose of a new language? You can't just say build a language for the 21st century. That's pretty arbitrary. Each computer language is designed to solve a particular set of problems. No language is the best. The down with syntax stuff is a particularly meaningless argument. Python probably has the most intuitive syntax of any "modern" language. I know many personal projects in python but very few professi…
What about questions like:
* How happy / stress free you want to be in your work?
* How fast you want to deliver?
In result programming language's syntax is just one component and should be considered in the context of various practices and tools in use. E.g. unit tested Python code is better than not unit tested C#.
If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century, the main feature that would make people frown is that it would not be laid down in a flat text file. - It would allow high-level programming like constraints statements a la Prolog. - It would allow graphical block building a la PureData - It would generate lower level version of these and allow a user to "zoom" into the generated code down to the machi…
Yes! It drives me crazy that due to a historical accident, we're still essentially writing programs as decks of 80-column punch cards. Nowadays the decks are virtual and the editing tools are better, but languages really haven't evolved to take advantage of modern I/O. I'll point out that the Xerox Alto (1973) let you write your source code with full WYSIWYG formatting (fonts, bold, italics, etc), so we've taken a step back since then.
If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century, the main feature that would make people frown is that it would not be laid down in a flat text file. - It would allow high-level programming like constraints statements a la Prolog. - It would allow graphical block building a la PureData - It would generate lower level version of these and allow a user to "zoom" into the generated code down to the machi…
> If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century, the main feature that would make people frown is that it would not be laid down in a flat text file. Yes! It drives me crazy that due to a historical accident, we're still essentially writing programs as decks of 80-column punch cards. Nowadays the decks are virtual and the editing tools are better, but languages really haven't evolved to take advanta…
Whenever I see something in code, I wonder, what does this do? If I started seeing bold and italics and it did nothing but draw attention, I would almost certainly feel it a distraction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The buttons at the bottom are not a survey, the rest of the article is hidden behind them.
That's a poor UI for an article. Just say what you want to say! If this article were written in the hypothetical, it would make the point much better.
> Ultimately this: > FILE * test_file = fopen(“/tmp/test.txt”, “w+”); > Should become something like this: > create file /tmp/test.txt for input and output as test_file > Syntax highlighting should work instead of syntax notation just fine. I couldn't disagree more. The first example is easily scannable visually -- a variable is being created from a function call. I can tell because my eyes immediately notice the mid…
People, don't comment before you read the whole article (and click on the survey on the bottom)...