Prothon - A New Prototype-based Language

Ben Collins writes "Prothon is a new industrial-strength, interpreted, prototype-based, object-oriented language that gets rid of classes altogether in the way that the Self language does. It uses the sensible, practical syntax and add-on C module scheme from Python. This major prototype improvement over Python plus many other general improvements make for a clean new revolutionary breakthrough in language development. Prothon is simple to use and yet offers the combined power of Python and Self. Check out the first public pre-alpha release at prothon.org."

Comments

Re:Bondage

[Just Some Guy]

I can think of two good reasons:

1. If you're using indentation for structure, then it's horribly confusing to allow both tabs and spaces. How many spaces is a tab worth? You could add a "tabsize=" variable to the core language, but you have to be able to parse a file before you can start evaluating it, so that would necessarily have to be an ugly hack.
2. An (old) Python topic-of-heated-discussion was the relative merit of tabs vs. spaces. Setting one as the standard avoids the whole issue and lets everyone get back to work.

My only gripe is that out of the two choices, they picked the wrong one <ducks>.

Like school in the summer time

[Sloppy]

Found a little example code inside the tarball, that shows what they mean by no classes:

Emp_proto = Object()

with Emp_proto: .name = ""

def .__init__(name): .name = name .hello()
return .

def .hello():
print "My name is:", .name

Emp_proto.hello()
emp = Emp_proto("Jim")
emp.hello()

Re:YANISL: Just What We Needed

[Hater's Leaving, The]

Not improved - just as bad:

"Like Python, Prothon uses indentation ..."

Oh joy.

THL.

A plea to all up-and-coming language designers

[alispguru]

Before you go off and try to code up the Next Big Thing, please do all of us a favor and learn a little bit about Lisp.

Don't learn about it from your officemate, or your college instructor, especially if they say they haven't used it in over ten years. You wouldn't believe the opinions of someone who learned C from K&R without upgrading their knowledge, would you?

Instead, start from places like the ALU web site or Cliki or Paul Graham's Lisp FAQ.

If you do this right, you will learn that computer languages:

are not inherently fast or slow - implementations are fast or slow, not languages

can be both dynamic and have good performance

can be cross-platform without swallowing POSIX whole

can have multiple inheritance without damaging your brain

can be object-oriented without being object-obsessed

If you like, you can quit as soon as you understand how static scoping and closures work - at least that way you will avoid the primary mistake in pretty much every recent scripting language.

There is a small risk you will become a SmugLispWeenie by doing this, so be forwarned.

There's another name for Prothon: Python

[Lulu of the Lotus-Ea]

We already have perfectly good prototype-based programming in Python. Do a search for "metaclass programming in python" for links to my articles on this topic. You can do -everything- with Python metaclasses (which isn't to say you -should-).

But actually, prototype programming is even simpler:

new = old.__class__(init, args, here)

Just what 'old' is is determined at runtime. And if you like, you can poke around at 'obj.__bases__' to futz with inheritence.

Not having read my _Charming Python_ articles isn't really a sufficient reason to create a new programming language.