"Twilight is an imperative, object oriented, general purpose programming language. The guiding principles of Twilight are simplicity, practicality, and orthogonality. It is a language which is easy to learn and to be productive in. An experienced programmer in Python, Java, C# or C++ will be able to pick up Twilight in a short period of time."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-09-01
As I clarified in my last response, it is an open source implementation, which is to say an open source compiler and standard library.
The implementation defines the specification at this time. No doubt, it could be expressed in EBNF and documented and called an open standard. What I think is great about open source is that it allows for a single implementation, there is no need for multiple competing implementations with subtle differences. This is a strength of languages like Perl, Python, Ruby, and other "Open source languages"...
Member since:2006-08-24
Fortran 95/2003 is fine. And millions of lines of Fortran 77 are available for free (e.g. Netlib).
And it was tested during decades by hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of coders and users. And INTEL supports it. And SUN supports it. And IBM supports it. And AMD supports it. There is even a .NET pipe. And all major Labs and Universities have legacy Fortran code. And it is normalized (the J3 comissions). And it is fast as hell.
And TWO (2) free software, open-source compilers are available for MOST platforms (GFORTRAN and G95.) And there are wrappers for TCL-TK, C, OPENGL, X11, etc.
Can you, please, explain what is the advantage of your wonderful new "open source" and highly tested language?
Edited 2006-09-01 23:19
Member since:2006-09-01
Well, my experience is with a different family of languages, C/C++/Java/Python... It's my understanding that Fortran is great for scientific and numeric applications, and for all I know other things as well, by all means use it. For my own purposes, and perhaps others like myself, a different syntax is preferable and more productive. My experience with Java and Python suggested to me that:
Object Orientation can be extremely productive...
There is a place for both Static and Dynamic typing, and the availability of both allows for optimization and early error detection in some circumstances (Static), very fast prototyping and development in others (Dynamic).
To top that off, I wanted the potential performance advantages and code obfuscation advantages of native code and the productivity benefits of automatic memory management...
Member since:2005-07-11
Member since:
2006-09-01
I've read the comments so far and have a few responses:
- It's fair to say that I'm biased, but I don't think the language is ugly at all. When it's in an editor it is simple, concise, easy to follow. At the same time, I did not put sufficient effort into the site (busy coding instead) and admittedly, it doesn't do it justice. I've taken a moment and formatted some of the code - the HelloWorld at the beginning and the sample class, Tokenizer, at the end. Have a look if you are interested in seeing it in a better format. I'll fix the rest as time permits.
-Why another language? There are a number of excellent languages out there, but I was after something specific, and wanted it all within a single language.
Object Oriented Syntax
Compilation to native code - no interpreter overhead
Both static and dynamic typing
Automatic Memory Management (Garbage Collection)
Exceptions
Multi Threading (not yet implemented) (no artificial barriers to thread performance, e.g. reference counting)
Simplicity, with an emphasis on building functionality in the class library
An Open Source implementation
Sooner rather than later
As far as the open source comment, I supposed it is technically an "Open source language implementation", but just "Open source Language" seemed sufficient...
Edited 2006-09-01 22:35