From: pjb@... (Pascal J. Bourguignon) Date: 2009-02-25T01:14:20+09:00 Subject: Re: Nexus Programming Language Gregory Brown writes: > On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Pascal J. Bourguignon > wrote: >> Ken Bloom writes: >> >>> On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:37:34 -0800, Avatar wrote: >>> >>>> A new object-oriented programming language has been unofficially >>>> released. There are some interesting details already published at the >>>> in-progress website (www.nexuslang.org). The language is a marriage >>>> between concepts introduced by Lua and Ruby. Strong influences from both >>>> languages with an eye towards simplification. The language itself >>>> introduces rarely seen strict left-to-right expression evaluation. There >>>> is no implicit operator precedence, the programmer is forced to be >>>> explicit with parenthetical expression, which has the added benefit of >>>> readability. Another form of this strict left-to-right evaluation is the >>>> assignment operator (^), rather then using the traditional = >>>> syntax, a value is put on the stack and then assigned to one or >>>> more named memory location on the right (i.e. 1+2^a^b, a*b^c). Another >>>> interesting feature is the inclusion method overloading. >>> >>> "There are no precedence rules applied to operators, they are simply >>> evaluated from left to right. Operator precedence is explicity applied >>> with the use of parenthetical expressions. The following example >>> demonstrates explicit operator precedence." >>> >>> Looks like a cross between Ruby and INTERCAL. When 1.0+2.0/3.0+4.0=5.0, >>> that's not a good thing, and will confuse most mathemeticians to no end. >>> And the use of ^ for assignment will also be very unintuitive. >>> >>> At the same time, I don't see *any* conceptual advantages over Ruby. Just >>> different, unintutitive, syntax. >> >> Well if you need to talk about no conceptual advantage and just >> different unintuitive syntax, you can say the same of Ruby vs. Lisp. > > Why are you subscribed to ruby-talk if you hate Ruby so much? Is > someone forcing you to use it? And if so, how is that our problem. If you were using CL (if more people were using CL), and Ruby were not invented, more bosses would let us use CL as a dynamic language, and indeed we wouldn't be forced to use Ruby (or worse, perl or python). Of course, you share the culpability with perl, PHP, Python, Java and so on. But I'm mostly justified in thinking this, by the authors of most of these languages themselves. Some of these authors are just poor chaps not knowing better, but some other including Java and Ruby knew very well Lisp, and instead of choosing to help develop and spread lisp, they voluntarily chosed to create different and inferior languages, picking only parts of lisp, and grafting over their abortive creation some monstruous syntax. The fact that these monstruous syntaxes view good in the eyes of the unwashed masses, and that the lack of features (when it's not just the inclusion of misfeatures) is oblivious to the same masses IS NOT an excuse. The only result is that Lisp is relegated as just an elegant weapon from a more civilized time, still mastered only by a few remaining Jedi. But there is still hope! This is perhaps the good that will come from these evils. A lot of programmers are now exposed on the goodness of dynamic languages, and they may notice (or if not by themselves, *I* will try to make them notice in threads like this), that their fad language of the day, is actually some incomplete subset of Lisp, and then why not use the full and authentic thing? Common Lisp is this way! PS: I'm not subscribed to "Ruby-Talk", there's a gateway between this mail-list and news:comp.lang.ruby. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__