[Haskell-cafe] WANTED: Compensated Haskell Hacker for Language Project

[Vo Minh Thu]

2011/3/29 Bryan Edds <bryanedds at yahoo.com>:
> Hi Jake!
>
>> My only question is this: what does your language offer that others do
>> not with respect to soft real time systems? The language you describe in
>> the linked forum thread looks neat, but I think I'm missing the
>> reasoning behind its design. Why is this design beneficial for soft real
>> time compared to other high level languages?
>
> The main thrust of the design is to provide nearly the power of Lisp and ML's
> semantics in a form that is syntactically palatable to the mass of intelligent
> industry programmers. While industry programmers typically prefer C-style
> languages, it's just not possible to build a C-style language with a reasonable
> macro development (language orientation) experience due to C's inherent
> syntactic complexities. Further, it seems to have been historically demonstrated
> that C-family programmers are not willing to make the a syntactic leap as far as
> say, Lisp or Ocaml.
>
> Barring the provision of yet another C-style language, there's another set of
> languages many C-family programmers do rather like: Ruby and Python. So by
> finding a direct mapping from s-expressions to a language with an feel and
> visual appeal similar to Python that ALSO approaches the machine efficiency of
> C++, I hope to create a lisp- and ML-derived language that is accessible to an
> audience wider than existing functional languages seem to have reached.
>
> As you can see, the design does admit some semantic compromises in the name of
> syntax and efficiency, but the compromise is surprisingly (at least to me)
> minimal. One compromise made in the name of C++ efficiency is the use of a
> machine word-sized default number type rather than the default number type used
> in lisp or Haskell. Of course, arbitrary number types can be made available
> naturally via a library using simple binary operation overrides, but they are
> not the default when you type the literal 5.
>
> I've discovered, at least to my own current satisfaction, that bringing lisp-
> and ML-style semantics to the masses is possible with less semantic compromises
> than previously seemed possible. By providing a language that industry
> programmers feel comfortable with, I hope to move as many of them as possible
> into the functional / language-oriented world.
>
> But more than that, I'm just designing the language I wish I could use everyday
> instead of C++ and C# :)

Hi,

First of all, I wish you good luck in your project.

Your mail made me think of my little syntactical[0] library. It needs
some love but is in principle very flexible. It makes a clear mapping
between distfix expressions and s-expressions. Distfix expressions are
flexible enough to accomodate for a lot of the usual constructs one
can find in programming languages.

Maybe you'll find it useful.

Cheers,
Thu

[0] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/syntactical