On Thursday, 14 July 2016 at 13:26:06 UTC, Chris wrote:
Such a language will never see the light of day.
Many such languages exist.
What makes a language attractive is that you can actually use
it - here and now.
What makes a language attractive is that it has system support
and provides solutions that save time. That's what languages like
TypeScript, Python, C#, Java, Swift and Go attractive.
I follow several languages that are very attractive, but that I
cannot use because they don't have system support. I am also
using languages that are less attractive than the alternatives
for the same reasons.
Of course, the first thing you ought to do is to look at
existing knowhow related to language design.
Which is what D did.
No, it did not build on existing knowhow in language design
theory, it was a fair reinterpretation of the C++ programming
model with a tiny bit of Pythonesque extensions.
... which, in fairness, where never meant to be carefully
designed languages. Just convenient hacks for everyday tasks.
Perl and Php started as small and convenient scripting languages,
but they were predominantly evolved in an iterative fashion for
decades after that, and aggregated a lot of issues related to
exactly iterative evolution.
Both C++ and D shows clear signs of their abstraction mechanisms
not fitting well with the core language. Too many mechanisms, not
generic enough. And that happened because significant changes
came late in the process, after deployment. You can say the same
thing about Go and error-handling, it sticks out like a sore
thumb.
