The more I read this article , the more I feel he is not talking about _language_. He is talking about _library_.
Or about languages designed in such a way that putting most of this stuff in the standard library feels natural, rather than bolted-on.
Modern Language Wishlist
21–30 of 75 posts
Re: Modern Language Wishlist
#22The most obvious thing I can see that he wasn't explicit about was Unicode support. Should be native, just work and included from day one.
Re: Modern Language Wishlist
#23This is basically a desciption of Clojure, in particular:
- Explicit model of time (http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Value-Identity-State-Rich...) - Homoiconic / Extensible syntax (shared by most Lisps) - Math-oriented numeric types (Clojure maths is arbitrary precision by default, and it has nice things like rational types) - Immutable (Clojure data structures are all immutable) - Garbage collection (inherited from the JVM) - String manipulation (Regular expressions are a built-in type)
Most of the other features actually seem more like libraries than language features, but given that Clojure can access the entire Java ecosystem I think you can do all of it from Clojure with relatively little pain.
Re: Modern Language Wishlist
#24This just seems like an everything and the kitchen sink list. I am not convinced supporting every possible use case leads to an approachable/efficient language. It seems akin to arguing my car should also be a boat and an airplane.
It's a heck of a mixed bag, but most of them are orthogonal and would coexist nicely, especially if libraries are allowed to seriously extend the syntax and type system. Seems hard but doable to me.
Re: Modern Language Wishlist
#25This is basically a desciption of Clojure, in particular: - Explicit model of time ( http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Value-Identity-State-Rich... ) - Homoiconic / Extensible syntax (shared by most Lisps) - Math-oriented numeric types (Clojure maths is arbitrary precision by default, and it has nice things like rational types) - Immutable (Clojure data structures are all immutable) - Garbage collection (inherited f…
Clojure is awesome, but does struggle on the "Good error messages" requirement, which is a problem when you're starting out.
Re: Modern Language Wishlist
#26The more I read this article , the more I feel he is not talking about _language_. He is talking about _library_.
Yea he mentions language features like interface-based polymophism, garbage collection, namespaces, first class functions, closures, etc. But then he goes on to talk about I/O methods, string manipulation, CSV output, etc. By which I think he means standard library features. The post really should have been split into language features + standard library features to make it clearer. I may be influenced by the fact i'…
The math-oriented types thing is known to schemers as the "numerical tower" and is seen as non-negotiable.
Re: Modern Language Wishlist
#27Is it just me or did anyone else feel he was talking about Racket? I have never understood why Racket doesnt get the love that it deserves.
Is it just me or did anyone else feel he was talking about Go? I have never understood why Go doesnt get the love that it deserves. (No seriously, he described Go)
He also took a good shot at describing Algol-68.
Re: Modern Language Wishlist
#28I'll add one that people don't seem to think about much: the ability to encapsulate an ongoing computation and grab new values from it at leisure.
Examples: Haskell has lazy lists; Python has generators; Unix shells have pipes; in Go you can whip this up pretty easily with a goroutine and a channel; etc. Does his ideal language allow for this?
Re: Modern Language Wishlist
#29If you're going to throw everything and the kitchen sink in a language, you may as well include Erlang-type multiprocessing and message passing.
Re: Modern Language Wishlist
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea he mentions language features like interface-based polymophism, garbage collection, namespaces, first class functions, closures, etc. But then he goes on to talk about I/O methods, string manipulation, CSV output, etc. By which I think he means standard library features. The post really should have been split into language features + standard library features to make it clearer. I may be influenced by the fact i'…
The math-oriented types thing is known to schemers as the "numerical tower" and is seen as non-negotiable.
Wow, i didn't know any language had something like that. Can't say I'm surprised that it's a feature of Scheme/Lisp.
If OP said "Numerical Tower" in the first place I'd probably have looked it up and understood what he was talking about. Thanks for the info anyway. Learn something new every day on HN.