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I'd love to have a modern statically typed language with type inferencing etc. that can be used for scripting, working in a REPL, as well as compiling to native

by jabl 6y ago

I'd love to have a modern statically typed language with type inferencing etc. that can be used for scripting, working in a REPL, as well as compiling to native code. I've never tried Swift, but it seems it could have all the required features. I guess it's just lacking a lot of libraries that work on Linux.

pjmlp 6y ago
OCaml fits the bill.
- jabl 6y ago
  Yeah, or Haskell. But those have been out there in a more or less mature form for decades, with no major uptake in sight. I guess they're just too esoteric for them to reach critical mass. So here I am, stuck with bash/python/C, and dabbling a bit with Rust..
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    If you would like to work in finance or compiler development, there is enough uptake of ML derived languages.
- swiley 6y ago
  OCaml definitely has some weirdness that come from its age though (char==byte thing for example.)
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Yeah there are some quirks, but that wasn't part of OP's request.
    - jabl 6y ago
      Well, I did specify "modern", which arguably includes sane Unicode handling. I think a reasonable compromise is to have "char" be a 32 bit type, whereas a "string" would be UTF8.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Not sure if I would call string handling in Swift sane, but to each its own.