Implementation Status (work in progress)
==========================================
* Grammar: 99.99% done but new ideas come up every day...
* Shell: implementation sorted out & working on the basic modules...
* Language: The C/C++ Programming Language
This is not a dead project. ;-)
Planned features:
- I/O Redirection (non-blocking pipelines all the way)
- Background Jobs (sure)
- Deferred Commands (could be more dangerous with this shell language)
- Subshells (could be useful without openning a new shell)
- Null Expansion Error (empty expansion stings; still has nullable expansion)
- Variable Scopes (default to local scope; no implicit block scopes)
- Namespaces (for module management)
- Ternary Logic (needed for the 21st century)
- Globbing (fail glob, null glob, fail/null regexp)
- Cartesian Products (just like bash's {a,b,c}{1,2,3})
- Multi-line Strings (no here documents; echo "<multiple lines>" | cat)
- String Interpolations (any handy shell script needs this feature)
- Array, Unordered Map, Ordered Map (containers for text)
- Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (power without perl)
- Arbitrary-precision Arithmetic (calculator included)
- Command Auto-completion (ease the typing)
- Event Listeners/Triggers (spooky at a distance)
Why another shell program?
==========================================
First of all, it is not a replacement of sh/bash/zsh/...
It is not intended to rule the POSIX world.
It is created because many (legacy) shells just f*ck my work style.
* bash: arcane syntax, RTFM first
* zsh: bloated syntax, must RTFM because too magical
* rc: nice implementation, poor user interface and polluted env
* fish: attractive but going bad, ugly details waiting inside
* ????: why bother with another true (and ugly) programming language?
Good-enough things are unbelievably great excuses to kill personal styles.
Now I gotta try my own implementation.
Goals:
* ease of typing (well, mainly for US keyboards)
* comprehensible syntax
* no undefined behaviors
* centralized UI configuration
* finely commented source code
* portable across unix-y systems
Non-Goals:
* posix-compliant
* pipe structured data
* interoperable with bash or other shells
* one scripting language to rule the world
* provide an escape-meta-alt-control-shift ide
* rich multi-language/locale support (defects: os/encoding/font/terminal)
In summary, the shell should ease your typing and provide a simple scripting
language that is easy to learn and master, thus more time for fun projects.
Scripting Language
==========================================
The shell scripts will use a new scripting language.
The actual look of it is left as an exercise for other shell developers.
(May there be a *Unix Shell Haters' Handbook*?)
Here is a checklist:
Programming Language Checklist
by Colin McMillen, Jason Reed, and Elly Jones.
You appear to be advocating a new:
[ ] functional [*] imperative [ ] object-oriented [*] procedural [ ] stack-based
[ ] "multi-paradigm" [ ] lazy [ ] eager [ ] statically-typed [*] dynamically-typed
[ ] pure [ ] impure [ ] non-hygienic [ ] visual [*] beginner-friendly
[ ] non-programmer-friendly [ ] completely incomprehensible
programming language. Your language will not work. Here is why it will not work.
You appear to believe that:
[*] Syntax is what makes programming difficult
[*] Garbage collection is free [*] Computers have infinite memory
[*] Nobody really needs:
[ ] concurrency [ ] a REPL [ ] debugger support [*] IDE support [ ] I/O
[ ] to interact with code not written in your language
[ ] The entire world speaks 7-bit ASCII
[ ] Scaling up to large software projects will be easy
[*] Convincing programmers to adopt a new language will be easy
[ ] Convincing programmers to adopt a language-specific IDE will be easy
[ ] Programmers love writing lots of boilerplate
[ ] Specifying behaviors as "undefined" means that programmers won't rely on them
[*] "Spooky action at a distance" makes programming more fun
Unfortunately, your language (has/lacks):
[*] comprehensible syntax [?] semicolons [_] significant whitespace [_] macros
[_] implicit type conversion [_] explicit casting [_] type inference
[_] goto [_] exceptions [_] closures [?] tail recursion [_] coroutines
[_] reflection [_] subtyping [_] multiple inheritance [_] operator overloading
[_] algebraic datatypes [_] recursive types [_] polymorphic types
[_] covariant array typing [_] monads [_] dependent types
[_] infix operators [_] nested comments [*] multi-line strings [*] regexes
[*] call-by-value [_] call-by-name [_] call-by-reference [_] call-cc
The following philosophical objections apply:
[*] Programmers should not need to understand category theory to write "Hello, World!"
[*] Programmers should not develop RSI from writing "Hello, World!"
[ ] The most significant program written in your language is its own compiler
[*] The most significant program written in your language isn't even its own compiler
[ ] No language spec
[ ] "The implementation is the spec"
[ ] The implementation is closed-source [ ] covered by patents [ ] not owned by you
[ ] Your type system is unsound [ ] Your language cannot be unambiguously parsed
[ ] a proof of same is attached
[ ] invoking this proof crashes the compiler
[ ] The name of your language makes it impossible to find on Google
[*] Interpreted languages will never be as fast as C
[ ] Compiled languages will never be "extensible"
[*] Writing a compiler that understands English is AI-complete
[ ] Your language relies on an optimization which has never been shown possible
[ ] There are less than 100 programmers on Earth smart enough to use your language
[ ] ____________________________ takes exponential time
[ ] ____________________________ is known to be undecidable
Your implementation has the following flaws:
[*] CPUs do not work that way
[*] RAM does not work that way
[ ] VMs do not work that way
[ ] Compilers do not work that way
[ ] Compilers cannot work that way
[ ] Shift-reduce conflicts in parsing seem to be resolved using rand()
[ ] You require the compiler to be present at runtime
[ ] You require the language runtime to be present at compile-time
[ ] Your compiler errors are completely inscrutable
[*] Dangerous behavior is only a warning
[ ] The compiler crashes if you look at it funny
[*] The VM crashes if you look at it funny
[*] You don't seem to understand basic optimization techniques
[*] You don't seem to understand basic systems programming
[*] You don't seem to understand pointers
[*] You don't seem to understand functions
Additionally, your marketing has the following problems:
[*] Unsupported claims of increased productivity
[*] Unsupported claims of greater "ease of use"
[ ] Obviously rigged benchmarks
[ ] Graphics, simulation, or crypto benchmarks where your code just calls
handwritten assembly through your FFI
[ ] String-processing benchmarks where you just call PCRE
[ ] Matrix-math benchmarks where you just call BLAS
[*] Noone really believes that your language is faster than:
[*] assembly [*] C [*] FORTRAN [*] Java [*] Ruby [*] Prolog
[*] Rejection of orthodox programming-language theory without justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox systems programming without justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox algorithmic theory without justification
[ ] Rejection of basic computer science without justification
Taking the wider ecosystem into account, I would like to note that:
[ ] Your complex sample code would be one line in: _______________________
[*] We already have an unsafe imperative language
[ ] We already have a safe imperative OO language
[ ] We already have a safe statically-typed eager functional language
[*] You have reinvented Lisp but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Javascript but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Java but worse
[ ] You have reinvented C++ but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP better, but that's still no justification
[ ] You have reinvented Brainfuck but non-ironically
In conclusion, this is what I think of you:
[ ] You have some interesting ideas, but this won't fly.
[*] This is a bad language, and you should feel bad for inventing it.
[ ] Programming in this language is an adequate punishment for inventing it.