[Tfug] Language choices

[Bexley Hall]

Hi,

--- Tim Ottinger <tottinge at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wow. That's fairly obscure.  I remember when REXX
> was supposed to be the next big thing back in the
> early early 90s, but then I haven't heard the
> name since then.  ML I heard of a few times.  Is
> somebody considering building new systems in these,
> or did you just inherit a turd?

I'm looking for ideas for a lightweight scripting
language to build into a couple of things.  But,
I am unsure of the exact criteria I want to
impose on my selection  :<

I am averse to punctuation-obsessive languages
(e.g., Java, C++, etc.) as the punctuation just
muddies up the code syntactically (try reading a
Java program to someone over the telephone -- this
is how I was taught to evaluate language syntax
and coding style -- vs. a program written in
something as "vanilla" as BASIC).

I like the lack of strong typing that REXX seems
to embrace (sure, strong typing is great if
you're working in an Ada-like environment where
you want the compiler to shepherd you away from
careless/sematic errors -- but, it just gets in
the way if you are trying to do something simple!).
And, variable precision arithmetic is a mandatory
criteria for me -- ideally, in a way that isn't
as syntactically cluttered as would be writing a
bunch of C functions like:

add(*addend, *addend, precision)

ML is different enough in its approach to be worth
time exploring -- though I think the implementation
would be heavy.  It seems like it would require a
run-time garbage collector (which means its resource
requirements are not well bounded).

But, I would like to avoid the *time* required to
get enough first-hand experience with these to be
able to make an "informed" decision.  I was hoping
people who *had* worked with them "in depth" over
a period of time would have stumbled on enough
of their assets and liabilities to be able to
point them out to me.  E.g., the ability to
embed spaces in a filename *sounds* like a great
idea -- "I can call this 'XMAS Shopping List'
instead of 'XMASShoppingList'" -- until you
actually *use* filenames of that sort routinely!

--don

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