Nimrod programming language

[Tomasz Rola]

On Fri, 8 May 2009, Andreas Rumpf wrote:

> Dear Python-users,
> 
> I invented a new programming language called "Nimrod" that combines 
> Python's readability with C's performance. Please check it out: 
> http://force7.de/nimrod/ 
> Any feedback is appreciated.
> 
> Regards,
> Andreas Rumpf

Interesting.

One question I ask myself upon seeing a new language is if it is possible 
to program amb (amb=ambiguous) operator in it. This page gives a very 
nice, "code first" explanation of amb and how it is supposed to work:

http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2005/10/11/amb-operator

I am not sure if this kind of extension is doable in your Nimrod. Perhaps 
it can be somewhat extrapolated from docs, but at the moment I have no 
time to do this (and could not google anything interesting).

As can be seen on the page mentioned, in Ruby this seems to be quite light 
and effortless. From what I know about Python, it is either hard or 
impractical (to the point of being impossible) to write amb in it.

Two additional notes regarding amb:

1. Even if Nimrod cannot support amb in an elegant way, it is still nice 
idea. Especially if you can make it to be kind of Python superset, so that 
Python programmer can cross the boundary between the two without much 
hassle (and maybe in both directions). Of course, not everything can be 
copied.

2. The amb itself is not really important so much, and I may never feel 
any need to actually use it. But it stroke me how nice it was looking in 
Ruby, even if I finally decided not to learn Ruby (not in this year, at 
least).

In Scheme, it is a bit more hackish, but still looks nice, at least to me:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dorai/t-y-scheme/t-y-scheme-Z-H-16.html#node_chap_14
http://planet.plt-scheme.org/package-source/murphy/amb.plt/1/0/planet-docs/amb/index.html

Anyway, I think amb is quite a test of a language. If you can do it, 
please show the code.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **