What I like in a programming language.

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Your ideal programming language, whether it exists or not, what would it be like, or is it like? What is in it and what not. Let me know what you prefer. Leave questions unanswered if you're not agreed with any of the options.

Whitespace

Whitespace is no intrinsic part of the syntax, except in some places whether there is any or not. [C-family, Pascal, Java, JSON, XML]. I do my own identing, and define closures with delimiters ("{}", "begin end", etc.).

Indenting is used for enclosures, defines the scope and level of the code. [MUMPS, Python, Nim, YAML].

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Compare-Assign

A single equals-sign "=" is assignment, double "==" is comparison. [C-family, Java]. Back in the days, when every byte (or column on a punch card) was important, and since assignment happens more than comparison (does it?), it influenced this and other selections made when designing the syntax.

A single equals-sign "=" is comparison, assignment is something visibily different, e.g. ":=" [Pascal]. It's one of the left-overs of this mathematical background we all come from (*cough*), so if we write a formula with "=" we check equality, assignments make things happen so deserve a specific notation.

Assignment should not be done with an operator (alone).

Other:

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Readability

Writing a bit of code involves reading a lot of code.

Programming is encoding logic, to make machines do what we want, we put in a form ready to process (by parser, interpreter, compiler, machine, etc.). [Assembler, APL, RegEx] If we want to see what it does, we use a debugger. To clarify we comment and document (*cough*).

It's important that code is readable by resembling human language. [COBOL, SQL, perhaps also Pascal, Fortran, SmallTalk]

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Subject Object Verb

What is your favourite notation?

Infix: "a + b" Computers are still beefed up calculators, so we speak math to it. Operator precedence makes for more concise code. [C-family, Java, ECMAScript]

Prefix: "+ 3 4" An operator is just another function to call, followed by its arguments. [Lisp-family]

Postfix: "a b +" And making things happen by pushing and popping from a stack. It happens behind the scenes anyway, so it's best to control it directly. [Postscript]

No operators: "add(a,b)" Operators are confusing and not verbose enough, everything uses a single notation. [Assembler]

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Declarative-Executive

About declaring elements and entities (namespaces, types, structures, classes) and executive logic (sequence, selection, iteration). By this I don't mean reflectivity or introspection (accessing code meta-data from code).

Declarative should be separated from executive. Source code files start with declarative. [C, Java] What is private or public is marked as such. We're well past our interpreter days, so we start with setting out the environment the program with operate in. Nested declarations are not allowed.

We make things that run, so executive takes precedence. Code is data, so declarative is part of the executive. A declaration is directly available as a manipulable something. In other words: Source files start with executive. [Lisp, ECMAScript]

Declarative and executive is visually separate, but declarations can be nested, so that in theory one declaration with its underlying declarations is (conceptually) a stand-alone program or has limited dependencies. Source files start with declarative. [Pascal]

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Compiler directives, Pre-compiler

Multi-platform or multi-whatever is a fact, we need to tell the compiler what to parse when. [C-family] Also concise code is important, so I need to be able to extend the language with a technique separate from the compiler (e.g. with macro's).

The compiler should know about everything. Things I don't use will get elimited by the smart linker or optimization. [Pascal]

The language has specific syntax do indicate what is dependent on the environment. [D, C#]

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Garbage Collection

or not. The hot potato.

Object lifetime management is important. I create objects, I release objects, I take care not to introduce memory leaks (*cough*) and to prevent use-after-free.

Everything is reference counted. If the last reference disappears, the object is cleaned up (and any resources released). This lets me generally predict when objects get released. I take care not to introduce circular references (*cough* weak references).

Objects are created when they're needed, small programs can avoid wasting time cleaning up. When the application gets larger, I'll have a talk with the garbage collection manager object.

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Multiple inheritance

Dog(FleaBag,FamilyMember)

I'm a true OOP-believer. I use it daily. I don't care that the binary run-time has a hell of a time figuring out v-tables.

I don't use it. I use other methods to design to the same effect (interfaces, traits, mixins, etc.)

I've never heard of that, what is it?

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Concurrency

Modern computers can do several things at the same time.

I know all about threading, I don't want my language to. I talk to the system what to run when on what thread.

Concurrency is the way to go. Any loop should get handled by the platform as concurrently as possible. I want any overhead to be asbstracted away out of sight.

I decide when to use the fancy stuff. If I do I want syntactic support for synchronisation, e.g. channels or putting ahead closures to perform when a future event occurs.

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Generics

A function has arguments, can complex type declarations have variable type arguments?

Is that that new thing these youngsters keep using everywhere? I guess they snuck it in together with that object persistence. I keep away from it as far as I can.

I couldn't work without it. I don't care the compiler needs to flesh out the definitions again for each specific type I put through it.

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