SNOWBOL -- Need your opinion on a future project I'm planning on building. Would you use a language which is basically just COBOL but with simplified syntax?

• moonscript

  35 3,118 4.4 Lua

  :crescent_moon: A language that compiles to Lua

I think it would make a lot more sense to make a language with similar semantics to COBOL, but modernized syntax. Instead of Typescript, a better model might be Coffeescript or Moonscript, which have a nearly 1:1 semantic mapping with their target language, but offer a more ergonomic and less verbose syntax. I haven't worked with COBOL at all, but I think the verbose syntax is probably one of the most offputting parts of the language. Stuff like move 1 to fact or multiply num by fact is tedious to type and read compared to fact = 1 or num *= fact. It's similar to how a mathematician would write equations like "z = x1.5 + y" instead of "z is equal to the sum of x raised to the power of 1.5 and y". The shorter form is not only quicker to write, but also easier to understand once you're familiar with the notational conventions.

• coffeescript

  54 16,432 3.4 CoffeeScript

  Unfancy JavaScript

I think it would make a lot more sense to make a language with similar semantics to COBOL, but modernized syntax. Instead of Typescript, a better model might be Coffeescript or Moonscript, which have a nearly 1:1 semantic mapping with their target language, but offer a more ergonomic and less verbose syntax. I haven't worked with COBOL at all, but I think the verbose syntax is probably one of the most offputting parts of the language. Stuff like move 1 to fact or multiply num by fact is tedious to type and read compared to fact = 1 or num *= fact. It's similar to how a mathematician would write equations like "z = x1.5 + y" instead of "z is equal to the sum of x raised to the power of 1.5 and y". The shorter form is not only quicker to write, but also easier to understand once you're familiar with the notational conventions.

• InfluxDB

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