[Tfug] Language choices

[t takahashi]

ok, i understand a little better where you are coming from.  you seem
to be on the right track, but there are a few things that stick out.
for brevity i won't comment on all the stuff i agree with you on.

at the low level, i'm not convinced that modern gc languages are quite
as bad as you imply.  even if they are, there are subsets of at least
one of those languages (scheme) that avoid gc.  you might want to
check them out.

at the high level, i don't yet see the reason for inventing a new
language or tweaking a language's syntax to a high degree.  note
"yet": you probably have a reason, but you didn't state it.

there are good reasons for doing that, but they are either very rare
or they leverage existing languages by building on top.  the design
effort of good language designers is something to take advantage of if
you can, and sometimes represents decades of hard work.  some of your
users might even speak the language already or wish to buy a book on
it at a level at which you are loath to write.  is it possible that
you are trying to take a shortcut through quicksand?

also a minor point.  you like recursion, but don't like functional
languages.  the two do not have to go together, but they often do.
for example, scheme guarantees tail recursion in the very standard.
this will ease your worries about blowing your stack.  however, you
might want to load a standard loop macro for users.


-- 
Webmaster: do you believe that people will (a) switch browsers to view
your "best viewed with" page or (b) go to your competitor?