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From: gateley@m2.csc.ti.com (John Gateley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Anyone want to design a language?
Message-ID: <111226@ti-csl.csc.ti.com>
Date: 17 Feb 90 20:07:48 GMT
References: <22569:05:10:24@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
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Organization: TI Computer Science Center, Dallas
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In article <22569:05:10:24@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>So what do you want in a compiled, imperative, perhaps object-oriented
>language? Take C as a starting point for good ideas and feel free to
>use parts of any other language.

Lets fix the brain damaged complicated syntax to start with:
make all terms in the language look like:
<simple term> ::= number or other constant etc.
<term> ::= (<term> <term> ...)
Here the first term is an "operation", like a special form name, or
a function call or even possibly another term, and the remaining
terms are "arguments" to the operation.

Presto: easy to understand/learn syntax, no messy parsers, a nice uniform
syntax which allows program manipulation tools to be developed much
easiser.

I don't take credit for this idea of course: it comes from Lisp.

John
gateley@m2.csc.ti.com