Nimrod programming language

[Martin Vilcans]

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Andreas Rumpf <Rumpf_A at web.de> 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.

Nice with a language with a new language designed for high
performance. It seems like a direct competitor with D, i.e. a
high-level language with low-level abilities. The Python-like syntax
is a good idea.

There are two showstoppers for me though:

1. Introducing a new programming language where the char type is a
byte is anachronistic. You're saying that programmers don't have to
care about the string encoding and can just treat them as an array of
bytes. That is exactly what causes all the problems with applications
that haven't been designed to handle anything but ASCII. If you're
doing any logic with strings except dumb reading and writing, you
typically *have to* know the encoding. Forcing programmers to be aware
of this problem is a good idea IMO.

You can certainly have a string type that uses byte arrays in UTF-8
encoding internally, but your string functions should be aware of that
and treat it as a unicode string. The len function and index operators
should count characters, not bytes. Add a byte array data type for
byte arrays instead.

2. The dynamic dispatch is messy. I agree that procedural is often
simpler and more efficient than object-oriented programming, but
object-oriented programming is useful just as often and should be made
a simple as possible. Since Nimrod seems flexible, perhaps it would be
possible to implement an object-orientation layer in Nimrod that hides
the dynamic dispatch complexity?

-- 
martin at librador.com
http://www.librador.com