Re:Ask HN: If you could invent a new programming paradigm wh...
by alexmingoia on Friday October 30, 2020 @11:58PM
(#24949028)
If I were to invent a language it would be radically simple: No functions, one data type, global scope, no modules, and no standard library.
- No package manager, code can be included with URLs, and signed via protocols that support signatures (ex: Git). No “modules” or package metadata, just source code files that are concatenated.
- Global scope, aided by the ability to namespace includes.
- A single data structure, like LISP. Probably records/dicts but could be anything.
- Only two types: Integers and UTF-8 strings. I’m serious.
- No functions. Data transformation occurs though pattern matching / destructuring.
- No package manager, code can be included with URLs, and signed via protocols that support signatures (ex: Git). No “modules” or package metadata, just source code files that are concatenated.
- Global scope, aided by the ability to namespace includes.
- A single data structure, like LISP. Probably records/dicts but could be anything.
- Only two types: Integers and UTF-8 strings. I’m serious.
- No functions. Data transformation occurs though pattern matching / destructuring.
- Automatic compile-time static memory allocation.
- Streaming I/O, with incremental computation, to allow for static memory allocation.
- No standard library, only semantics for destructuring the single data type, integers, and strings.
I think the closest languages to this would be variants of datalog.