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Introducing The Heron Programming Language
Christopher Diggins writes "The Heron programming language, is a new general-purpose multi-paradigm programming language in the style of C++ which is starting to make waves. The popular Polish software development magazine Software 2.0 is featuring an article on Heron, in its first English version of the magazine slated to appear in February 2005. A preview of the Heron article is available."
Of course, the first thing I search for in the article is a link that describe the language itself. What a thing to leave out!
You're looking for Python and Ruby. Both are so easy to learn that the correct answer to which one is "both"; try the tutorials for both and you'll probably know pretty quickly. The thing to look for is which philosophy suits you better.
The only thing out of that list you might think is missing is "generic programming", but in general that's because both languages support it so naturally that it isn't even a seperate paradigm. I know Python has libraries for people who insist on the trappings of generic languages, or who really, really need completely seperate functions for the various combinations of args, but I don't know much about them because while I've looked at such things, I've never encountered a situation where the "correct" answer wasn't a slighty more careful API, YMMV.
Unless you're doing intensive numerical calculations that can not be expressed in terms of the various libraries for numerical calculation, or are really focused on embedded programming, both are plenty fast for normal programming.
(I don't know about Ruby but there is a lot of progress towards optimizing Python being made, although I don't know if we'll ever quite get to compilation to pure native code. See PyPy, for instance, which has recently been funded so it ought to stick around and produce something. I expect that within another couple of years, through one avenue or another, the speed penalties of Python will be gone for all practical purposes.)
Granted, neither of these may currently perfect... but holy cow, are they better than C++. Unbelievably better, for the vast majority of uses.
Heron2C compiles to C++, where did I give the impression it compiles to Java? Heron attempts to satisfy all of those goals you list. Check it out at http://www.heron-language.com/
Christopher Diggins
Note that Christopher Diggins is both the author of the language and the article submitter. This may affect your perception on whether a new C++like language is really newsworthy.
The world does not need more C-alike languages, especially if they don't even add in higher order functions and sum/product types. What are they thinking?!
first class functions in a static language? This is like having mallable steel trusses? What is this trying to do again? If you want first class functions, you'll want a define-on-the-fly language as well.
You, sir, are either trolling or criminally ignorant.
Here is a statically typed, natively compiled language that provides fully first-class functions.
Here is another.
There are many others; those are just the most widely used.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....