I'm sorry, but their code formatting (an equals sign and a brace each on their own line to start a function???) and choice of syntax is just atrocious. "Fi" and "esac"... are you serious? At least we don't have to type nuf to end functions and ipa to end api definitions. In VB, you type End and then what you are ending. In Ruby, you just type end. In Mythryl, who knows? Sometimes it's a backwards word, sometimes it's end, sometimes it's a brace. This is what a well-designed language looks like to them?
Furthermore, they talk about things being built in from the start, but the site says that one of the current projects is implementing object oriented programming. How in the world is that not going to be bolted on? If there's anything that you need to bake into a language (if it's going to have them) it's objects.
Finally, there is a lot of talk on that page to not have any sense of organization or "here is some cool stuff you can do now that you couldn't before."
Usually I'm excited to read about new languages. (Potion looks AWESOME.) This... was disappointing. Sure, it may perform well, but I really don't care. I'd rather ease of programming and maintenance any day. Python and Ruby for the win (at least until Potion is done).
Also, they say they're putting the "fun" in "hacking", but as mentioned before, the page looks like it was written for managers and certainly not for hackers.
I agree that the consistency of esac isn't very nice. I prefer } to esac/fi to end, actually. "end" is horrible. You can consecutively }}}} or )))) in a way that reduces some of the whitespace-significance jealousy
end
end
end
end
But I don't think the syntax is bad. In fact, "fi" and "esac" give some hints to the reader in deeply nested structures (I can hear it already: then don't deeply nest)
The two line = { is only for compound functions; a single expression with a "where" seems fine. I do agree that code layout conventions that reduce the usable vertical space are questionable; scrolling sucks.
I didn't especially like SML (or Ocaml) syntax, but they're both solid languages.
http://www.smlnj.org/dist/working/index.html seems to contradict the story by Mythryl's author that SML/NJ isn't maintained. His fork doesn't seem to do 64-bit, while SML/NJ does.
I'd be interested in hearing more about the reason this project is not just a set of libraries for SML/NJ. I guess the author has strong opinions about syntax and didn't like ML's.
"fi" and "esac" come from shell programming. He's copying various style/syntax elements (including ugly bits!) from sh and C in hopes that it will be less off-putting to mainstream programmers than ML syntax.
The problem with having a built-in object system is that you're stuck with it. People mean very, very different things by OOP, and being able to add an OO system when it's useful is probably a better approach. Using OO without "bolting it on" works well for the Lisp family and for Lua. (Adding a prototype-based, class-based, or message-passing object system with via metatables is quite easy.) You just need to have a sufficiently flexible core language.
Of course, doing it in a fully static-typing-safe manner is tricky, but since OO is arguably defined by late binding, that's naturally works against pinning as much as possible down at compile time. (Lisp and Lua are just dynamic and don't worry about it.)
Furthermore, they talk about things being built in from the start, but the site says that one of the current projects is implementing object oriented programming. How in the world is that not going to be bolted on? If there's anything that you need to bake into a language (if it's going to have them) it's objects.
Finally, there is a lot of talk on that page to not have any sense of organization or "here is some cool stuff you can do now that you couldn't before."
Usually I'm excited to read about new languages. (Potion looks AWESOME.) This... was disappointing. Sure, it may perform well, but I really don't care. I'd rather ease of programming and maintenance any day. Python and Ruby for the win (at least until Potion is done).
Also, they say they're putting the "fun" in "hacking", but as mentioned before, the page looks like it was written for managers and certainly not for hackers.