This is a gist describing some random thoughs on a possible programming language. It is by no means a specification or in anyway something concrete, at the moment it is some thoughts, put in this gist, to remove them from my head.
Comments are very welcome.
It should be possible - without making them symbols - to have a compiler recognise public and pubilc or even pubic as the same symbol. Of course if you ever choose to use a variable name called pubilc this would not be possibl, but whatever else you do this should be possible.
Curly braces are not bulky and blocky enough! Squarebrackets should indicate code-blocks! /sarcasm-off
It should be evaluated wether there are more suited symbols for common things. Like code-blocks, are the C-style curly-braces good enough, or should there be another indicator of blocks fx §! Is exclamation-mark the right symbol for boolean-negation or what?
It sort-of boils down to what language you are coming from and what you are comfortable doing. Python is using indentation, BASIC uses Then-end, so...
Something about type-system
First see typing, i beleive that static typing would be great, but inferred(C#, SML...). Therefore it should also be possible to allow functions returning thruth values, to have an negated counter part automatically generated.
After working with C# for quite some time, I have fallen in love with the multi-paradigm way. Having functional conctructs right at your hand, when a task calls for it, has been very pleasant, and has led to some very elegant solutions.
The problem is the limitations(where can they be used and how, scoping, and so on), and that C# is mainly imperative. I find Haskell to be more elegant, by being functional first.
Exceptions are inherently hard to catch, and make exahusting catch-es very hard. Therefore the following solution is proposed. It should be noted that the concept of checked vs unchecked exceptions from Java, is quite liked, instead of the more loose C# way. Either you declare or you dont throw. The following solution doesn't provide a way for unchecked exceptions, but I beleive that it could quite easily be achieved.
All methods should return an Either type, to signal error conditions. The below link, presents a very elegant solution for C# which could be possible.
http://siliconcoding.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/either_in_csharp/
The signature should be something like:
function int Foo(){
...
return 42;
}
let f = Foo()
case f:
Left val: NextOp()
Right err: HandleError()
Further, it should be possible to have "clean" functions, that doesn't at all provide room for error, or at least makes a promise not to return any.
If the runtime could provide a way for checking pre/post conditions, that would be nice. And the code, a way to annotate methods with conditions.
Look at erlang - Message passing is the way to go. Btw Atoms are great