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by Keith Ray.
Original Post: What would it take for a new language to impress me?
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1. painless interoperability with other languages: C in particular, Objective-C, C++, Python, Java, Ruby, SQL, etc. Objects in this new language should be able to use and/or be proxies for objects in other languages. The language should be usable for shared libraries, plugins, device-drivers, and so on, as well as applications and scripting.
2. support for threads and inter-thread / inter-process communication. Java had "synchronized" but that wasn't enough (and maybe not even the right thing to have). Cocoa's Distributed Objects turn out to be fairly easily used for both inter-thread / inter-process communication, and Cocoa also has support for other ways of synchronous/asynchronous communication, but much of Apple's Cocoa isn't thread-safe. Make it easy to use operating-system threads. Also, make it easy for a programmer to set up a million thread-like objects that don't harm each other and which don't thrash a CPU to death.
3. garbage collection. Look to modern Smalltalk environments for how to do it right. Be able to turn it off for specific objects, etc.
4. work with programmer's weaknesses: many programmers forget to initialize local and member variables... make it easy to init them to a good value, and default to initializing them a zero, null, or default-constructor. Also put in warnings for some other common problems.
5. avoid other language/system weaknesses: learn from common problems areas in Java for example: classpath and class-loaders.
6. consider Objective-C's "message-eating null" -- many people who've never used it expect it to cause problems, but it actually makes programming easier and simpler. Only very rarely do you need to check if a variable is null... and you never get "Null Pointer Exceptions" halting your program.
7. and while you're at it, I'd like to use a debugger that understands objects: let me set breakpoints on ONE specific object: any methods (or any methods that I select) called on that object break into the debugger. Let me add logging of all state-changes to an object, or class of objects, while I'm in the debugger, without writing any code. If I set a break point on a method, let me specify which classes that applies to, if the method is inherited by more than one class. Let me browse all instances of a class (or all classes), and optionally find out where each one was created.
Note that I don't talk about syntax, or dynamic-type-checking versus static-type-checking (versus type-inferencing). A correct program is correct in spite of the kind of type-checking that a compiler might enforce. I would want help from the compiler, but not hindrances. I've seen a lot of varieties of syntax. I would want something readable (and I don't consider Lisp and Perl - as usually written - to be readable). Pascal might be considered verbose these days, but it was designed for readability and simplicity (a parser for Pascal would be pretty simple, very simple compared to a C++ parser). Smalltalk is very simple, and pretty readable. Objective-C is "unusual" for those used to C++, but it is powerful, and pretty painless in integrating with other languages. I wonder what a combination of Pascal and Objective-C would look like?
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