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Give it a new syntax, and try again… It's not so difficult nowadays to write a "syntax-transpiler". The hard part, the language, would remain the same. People

Give it a new syntax, and try again… It's not so difficult nowadays to write a "syntax-transpiler". The hard part, the language, would remain the same. People seem having done so successfully with OCaml, see ReScript.

Jtsummers 5y ago
The verbosity can only be removed at a superficial level. Many people object to begin and end, but they’d chafe even more if they got further. For good reasons (Ada leans toward explicit declarations in favor of implicit ones) you have to list each sub program you depend on in a module by name. Even if you don’t import it’s symbols. And you have to explicitly instantiate generics (like C++ templates) rather than the compiler inferring your intention. Things like that cannot be removed from the language so only a superficial improvement can be achieved, for what benefit?
- still_grokking 5y ago
  It's difficult to design whole languages (you won't get anywhere close some adoption in production at important places under ten years I guess; if you're lucky of course). Having already something that proved its merit and strong foundations is for sure a good starter for a "new language" (as it would streamline the process to create such "new" language drastically). People are carving for powerful, safe, fast languages. So there is a market. If it's "only" about the verbosity and some cumbersome edges this could be fixed with some "overlay syntax". To be honest I'm one of those people that looked a few times at Ada as it was said to be powerful, fast, and safe. But it looks so awkward in my eyes; even I know I should not judge languages by syntax! The look-and-feel is just a strong point. I guess it's not only me… So I suspect a syntactic make-over could give new life to an old but powerful language. Just by making it look more "modern" (whatever this means).

Jtsummers 5y ago

The verbosity can only be removed at a superficial level. Many people object to begin and end, but they’d chafe even more if they got further. For good reasons (Ada leans toward explicit declarations in favor of implicit ones) you have to list each sub program you depend on in a module by name. Even if you don’t import it’s symbols. And you have to explicitly instantiate generics (like C++ templates) rather than the compiler inferring your intention. Things like that cannot be removed from the language so only a superficial improvement can be achieved, for what benefit?

still_grokking 5y ago
It's difficult to design whole languages (you won't get anywhere close some adoption in production at important places under ten years I guess; if you're lucky of course). Having already something that proved its merit and strong foundations is for sure a good starter for a "new language" (as it would streamline the process to create such "new" language drastically). People are carving for powerful, safe, fast languages. So there is a market. If it's "only" about the verbosity and some cumbersome edges this could be fixed with some "overlay syntax". To be honest I'm one of those people that looked a few times at Ada as it was said to be powerful, fast, and safe. But it looks so awkward in my eyes; even I know I should not judge languages by syntax! The look-and-feel is just a strong point. I guess it's not only me… So I suspect a syntactic make-over could give new life to an old but powerful language. Just by making it look more "modern" (whatever this means).