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G# – A modern .NET language with Go, Kotlin, and Swift ergonomics

davidobando.github.io

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Re: G# – A modern .NET language with Go, Kotlin, and Swift ergonomics

#11

Post by AdieuToLogic »

Syzygies wrote: post #7
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #4

Just trying to offer some help here, not an attack: ``` G# brings Go-, Kotlin-, and Swift-style ergonomics — packages, func, data class, nullable handling with if let, structured concurrency with scope — to the .NET runtime. Source compiles directly to managed assemblies. ``` This is a decent description - but as someone also building a language in a similar space - who isn't super familiar with the .NET runtime... M…

> Rich Hickey has a joke about semi-colons in language design I didn't see semicolons, but I saw plenty of {} braces, and I can't explain why they're needed. https://github.com/Syzygies/Compare "I'm already quite sure how I will die: I'll read another article on Hacker News about a new programming language where I see nothing new, and I'll read that they included {}; to make C programmers comfortable. I'll have a mas…

> I didn't see semicolons, but I saw plenty of {} braces, and I can't explain why they're needed.

"Curly braces" (a.k.a. "{}") make lexicographical scope simpler to manage for lexers and parsers. Alternate grammars increase compiler complexity, excluding trivial token replacement.

As for semicolons, they are only a linguistic requirement for supporting multiple executable statements on the same source-code line.

Re: G# – A modern .NET language with Go, Kotlin, and Swift ergonomics

#13

Post by AdieuToLogic »

gwbas1c wrote: post #9

How is this different than C#? What new concepts does this bring that C# doesn't? 20 years ago there was some momentum behind Visual Basic .Net; but the language was so similar to C# that it just wasn't worth using. There was a joke that .Net was a "skinnable language." BTW, there's a whole nitpicky/semantic argument that C# isn't null safe because of the null forgiving operator. That will probably come into play wit…

> 20 years ago there was some momentum behind Visual Basic .Net; but the language was so similar to C# that it just wasn't worth using.

IronPython[0] and IronRuby[1] would like a word... Largely so they could be remembered.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IronPython

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IronRuby

Re: G# – A modern .NET language with Go, Kotlin, and Swift ergonomics

#14

Post by narnarpapadaddy »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #4

Just trying to offer some help here, not an attack: ``` G# brings Go-, Kotlin-, and Swift-style ergonomics — packages, func, data class, nullable handling with if let, structured concurrency with scope — to the .NET runtime. Source compiles directly to managed assemblies. ``` This is a decent description - but as someone also building a language in a similar space - who isn't super familiar with the .NET runtime... M…

It’s probably too little too late in the age of Claude…

C# grew all those features over time. It had to leave syntax to support old patterns to preserve backwards compatibility. Thus, the syntax has grown a bit noisy over time to support all those features. This is reboot keeping the newer ergonomics and streamlining the syntax.

I probably wouldn’t adopt it for existing projects or use .Net for any future project, but it looks really nice for what it is.

Re: G# – A modern .NET language with Go, Kotlin, and Swift ergonomics

#17

Post by userbinator »

gwbas1c wrote: post #9

How is this different than C#? What new concepts does this bring that C# doesn't? 20 years ago there was some momentum behind Visual Basic .Net; but the language was so similar to C# that it just wasn't worth using. There was a joke that .Net was a "skinnable language." BTW, there's a whole nitpicky/semantic argument that C# isn't null safe because of the null forgiving operator. That will probably come into play wit…

There was a joke that .Net was a "skinnable language."

I remember the MS documentation had sample code in all the variants of .NET languages they created (C#, F#, VB.NET), and of course there were decompilers that let you choose which one to target, with many other translation tools available between them.

Re: G# – A modern .NET language with Go, Kotlin, and Swift ergonomics

#18

Post by afavour »

truncate wrote: post #10

I wish README is clear whether they are using AI or not, and if so what the guidelines are. Not that anything wrong with using it, but given anyone with $$$ for tokens can do it, its nice to know what their process is etc etc. Gives me more confidence that its worth checking out.

Agreed... the commit log looks very much AI generated to me. And the project was started on May 22 so it's just under two months old.

Not that either of these things is disqualifying but AI really has make it difficult to know how established a project actually is.

Re: G# – A modern .NET language with Go, Kotlin, and Swift ergonomics

#19

Post by Bnjoroge »

truncate wrote: post #10

I wish README is clear whether they are using AI or not, and if so what the guidelines are. Not that anything wrong with using it, but given anyone with $$$ for tokens can do it, its nice to know what their process is etc etc. Gives me more confidence that its worth checking out.

It’s a pretty safe assumption that most recent projects use AI in some capacity. Models have gotten pretty good
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