www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D - The Fan Programming Language

reply Paul D. Anderson <paul.d.removethis.anderson comcast.andthis.net> writes:
From a blog highlighted on java.net --

http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/the_fan_language_is_it

The blog entry speculates Fan might be a ("the") next-generation Java, i.e.,
not an extension of Java but a new language that avoids Java's shortcomings.
Whether it succeeds is in the eye of the beholder.

There are some interesting similarities with the D programming language. In
particular there is a D-like immutability concept. In Fan there is only one
keyword ("const") with multiple meanings -- const variables, const classes and
const functions... And there is only one kind of immutability -- const objects
can never change. No mention is made of transitivity. I don't know whether it
is ignored or implicit.

Anyhoo, might be worth looking at.

Paul
Jun 12 2008
next sibling parent reply BCS <ao pathlink.com> writes:
Reply to Paul,


 From a blog highlighted on java.net --
 
 http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/the_fan_language_is_it
 
 The blog entry speculates Fan might be a ("the") next-generation Java,
 i.e., not an extension of Java but a new language that avoids Java's
 shortcomings. Whether it succeeds is in the eye of the beholder.
 
 There are some interesting similarities with the D programming
 language. In particular there is a D-like immutability concept. In Fan
 there is only one keyword ("const") with multiple meanings -- const
 variables, const classes and const functions... And there is only one
 kind of immutability -- const objects can never change. No mention is
 made of transitivity. I don't know whether it is ignored or implicit.
 
 Anyhoo, might be worth looking at.
 
 Paul
 


"Fan runs on the JVM and the .NET runtime. It manages this by writing to 
a temporary intermediate format, which then gets further compiled to the 
right bytecode."


Source -> Fan-IL -> JVM/MSIL -> bin -> micro-ops -> ...

How far removed from the actual cpu can you get!

(Note: I'm not saying this is a problem...)
Jun 12 2008
parent Paul D. Anderson <paul.d.removethis.anderson comcast.andthis.net> writes:
BCS Wrote:


 Reply to Paul,
 

 there is only one keyword ("const") with multiple meanings -- const
 variables, const classes and const functions... And there is only one
 kind of immutability -- const objects can never change. No mention is
 made of transitivity. I don't know whether it is ignored or implicit.


 
 "Fan runs on the JVM and the .NET runtime. It manages this by writing to 
 a temporary intermediate format, which then gets further compiled to the 
 right bytecode."
 
 
 Source -> Fan-IL -> JVM/MSIL -> bin -> micro-ops -> ...
 
 How far removed from the actual cpu can you get!
 
 (Note: I'm not saying this is a problem...)
 
 


Yes, it is emphatically not a down-to-the-hardware language.

Also, upon further review, there is a second sort of "const". Any class member
may have the "readonly" attribute. This attribute means that the setter is
private. No guarantee of immutablity is implied.
Jun 12 2008
prev sibling next sibling parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Paul D. Anderson:

 From a blog highlighted on java.net --
 http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/the_fan_language_is_it


There are lot of new languages coming up now, but they are quite similar,
because most of them run on just two virtual machines, sharing the same
problems, garbage collector, etc.

I have seen the following in another language (I don't remember what one, maybe
Scala, and I think it's an interesting thing. Boo language too allows something
similar), I think this may be useful for D too:


Dynamic coding


Fan encourages more dynamic coding styles. If you use the dot to call a method
(as per normal Java) then the method is compile time checked. If you use the
arrow operator, then the method is called by reflection. Further, if the method
called by reflection doesn't exist, then this error can be caught (the 'trap'
method) which is like the 'method missing' concepts in other languages and
enables powerful DSLs to be written.
  obj.doStuff()   // compile-time checked call, as per Java
  obj->doStuff()   // runtime reflection call

This can also be thought of as enabling duck typing.<


Regarding the "each" method and the like, I think it may be useful, but Python




list.each |Str val, Int index| {
  echo("$index = $val")
 }
<


Regarding semicolons:

Lines do not need a semicolon at the end. A newline will suffice. 


Groovy and Scala too don't require them, you can see some groovy examples here:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/groovy.php
For example:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=nbody&lang=groovy&id=0
You can see that semicolons are an useless form of redundancy.

Bye,
bearophile



 Jun 12 2008



prev sibling  parent  BLS <nanali nospam-wanadoo.fr>  writes:


Paul D. Anderson schrieb:

 From a blog highlighted on java.net --
 
 http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/the_fan_language_is_it


What I really like is the code blocks (closure) syntax.
smalltalk like code-blocks are much cleaner than our D closure stuff.
(especially when used to build iterators)

Bjoern



 Jun 12 2008