November 19th, 2007
A new language
So, it’s that time of the year again. The restlessness flows over me. I feel cold and numb. And no, it’s not because I live in London – it’s because I need the warmth of learning a new language.
Now, I want something I can actually get into and learn. I’ve tried to get into OCaml, but I gotta admit I hate the type system. I have no problem with bondage static typed languages (Haskell’s type system is really nice, for example) but OCaml’s really feels like half of it exists just to cover up holes in the other half. There seems to be a large overlap in functionality, and lots of workarounds for handling things that should be simple.
I’m half way into Erlang, but for several reasons the language feels very primitive.
I’ve kinda thought about maybe getting serious with Scala. I like many of the language features, it’s a nicely designed language and so on. But – hear this, people – I would love to get away from the JVM for a while, just for the sake of it. I can do Scala later. I actually have a medium sized project lined up for my Scala learning. But not right now.
So, what do I want? Something I haven’t touched before. I would love something that involves radically new language features, if there are any left to discover. I have no need for it to be static or dynamic specifically. Doesn’t really matter. It would be fun if it’s new, but if it’s old, good and still in use in some sectors that would be fun too. Specifically something that’s not mainly run on the JVM or CLR. And of course, not any of the “mainstream” languages, who I actually tend to know fairly well (and yeah, to my sorrow that includes the whole W-family…).
Please help me! Give this December new meaning for me. I promise, if someone comes up with a nice language to try out, I’ll be very fair to it when I evaluate and learn it. =)
