Programming Language Checklist
by Colin McMillen, Jason Reed, and Elly Fong-Jones, 2011-10-10.
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: __________R____________
[ ] 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.
Pointless