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I have mixed feelings on Rust's syntax, especially around generics, lifetimes, and the `modifier -> keyword` syntax (i.e. `async fn` or `pub fn`). For Inko, I wanted something that's easy to parse by hand, and no context specific parsing (e.g. `QUOTE -> something` being the start of a lifetime in one place, but a char literal in another place).
Another motivator for that is that years ago I worked on Rubinius for a while (an implementation of Ruby), and helped out with a parser for Ruby (https://github.com/whitequark/parser). The Ruby developers really liked changing their already impossible syntax in even more impossible ways on a regular basis, making it a real challenge to provide syntax related tools that support multiple Ruby versions. I wanted to avoid making the same mistake with Inko, hence I'm actively trying to keep the syntax as simple as is reasonable.
As for the specific examples:
- `fn async` means your parser only needs to look for `A | B | fn` in a certain scope, instead of `A | B | fn | async fn`. This cuts down the amount of repetition in the parser. An example is found at https://github.com/inko-lang/inko/blob/8f5ad1e56756fe00325a3..., which parses the body of a class definition.
- Skipping parentheses is directly lifted from Ruby, because I really like it. Older versions took this further by also letting you write `function arg1 arg2`, but I got rid of that to make parsing easier. It's especially nice so you can do things like `if foo.bar.baz? { ... }` instead of `if foo().bar().baz?()`, though I suspect opinions will differ on this :)
- Until recently we did in fact use `::` as a namespace separator, but I changed that to `.` to keep things consistent with the call syntax, and because it removes the need for remembering "Oh for namespaces I need to use ::, but for calls .".
- `[T]` for generics is because most editors automatically insert a closing `]` if you type `[`, but not when you type `<`. If they do, then trying to write `10<20` is annoying because you'd end up with `10<>20`. I also just like the way it looks more. The usual ambiguity issues surrounding `<>` (e.g. what leads to `foo::()` in Rust) doesn't apply to Inko, because we don't allow generics in expressions (i.e. `Array[Int].with_capacity(42)` isn't valid syntax) in the first place.
I had been only following this language with some interest, I guess this was born in gitlab not sure if the creator(s) still work there. This is what I'd have wanted golang to be (albeit with GC when you do not have clear lifetimes).
But how would you differentiate yourself from https://gleam.run which can leverage the OTP, I'd be more interested if we can adapt Gleam to graalvm isolates so we can leverage the JVM ecosystem.
I have mixed feelings on Rust's syntax, especially around generics, lifetimes, and the `modifier -> keyword` syntax (i.e. `async fn` or `pub fn`). For Inko, I wanted something that's easy to parse by hand, and no context specific parsing (e.g. `QUOTE -> something` being the start of a lifetime in one place, but a char literal in another place).
Another motivator for that is that years ago I worked on Rubinius for a while (an implementation of Ruby), and helped out with a parser for Ruby (https://github.com/whitequark/parser). The Ruby developers really liked changing their already impossible syntax in even more impossible ways on a regular basis, making it a real challenge to provide syntax related tools that support multiple Ruby versions. I wanted to avoid making the same mistake with Inko, hence I'm actively trying to keep the syntax as simple as is reasonable.
As for the specific examples:
- `fn async` means your parser only needs to look for `A | B | fn` in a certain scope, instead of `A | B | fn | async fn`. This cuts down the amount of repetition in the parser. An example is found at https://github.com/inko-lang/inko/blob/8f5ad1e56756fe00325a3..., which parses the body of a class definition.
- Skipping parentheses is directly lifted from Ruby, because I really like it. Older versions took this further by also letting you write `function arg1 arg2`, but I got rid of that to make parsing easier. It's especially nice so you can do things like `if foo.bar.baz? { ... }` instead of `if foo().bar().baz?()`, though I suspect opinions will differ on this :)
- Until recently we did in fact use `::` as a namespace separator, but I changed that to `.` to keep things consistent with the call syntax, and because it removes the need for remembering "Oh for namespaces I need to use ::, but for calls .".
- `[T]` for generics is because most editors automatically insert a closing `]` if you type `[`, but not when you type `<`. If they do, then trying to write `10<20` is annoying because you'd end up with `10<>20`. I also just like the way it looks more. The usual ambiguity issues surrounding `<>` (e.g. what leads to `foo::()` in Rust) doesn't apply to Inko, because we don't allow generics in expressions (i.e. `Array[Int].with_capacity(42)` isn't valid syntax) in the first place.