Red Hat Releases Ceylon Language 1.0.0

First time accepted submitter Gavin King writes with news that the Ceylon language hit 1.0 "Ceylon 1.0 is a modern, modular, statically typed programming language for the Java and JavaScript virtual machines. The language features, an emphasis upon readability and a strong bias toward omission or elimination of potentially-harmful constructs; an extremely powerful type system combining subtype and parametric polymorphism with declaration-site variance, including first-class union and intersection types, and using principal types for local type inference and flow-dependent typing; a unique treatment of function and tuple types, enabling powerful abstractions; first-class constructs for defining modules and dependencies between modules; a very flexible syntax including comprehensions and support for expressing tree-like structures; and fully-reified generic types, on both the JVM and JavaScript virtual machines, and a unique typesafe metamodel. More information may be found in the feature list and quick introduction." If you think Ceylon is cool, you might find Ur/Web interesting too.

Comments

Cool!

[warrax_666]

One of the few languages in recent times with an interesting type system which isn't just a trivial rehash of existing (in practice) ones.

Re:Cool!

[ron_ivi]

I'd like to see a type system that can help enforce units (like mass * distance = force). If it were really lightweight (in typing) to create types with meaningful units, it could protect you from accidentally adding things like Mbits with MBytes.

Re:Cool!

[Just Some Guy]

You'd love Haskell.

Re:Cool!

[amiga3D]

I swear I thought that said Cylon language and I started thinking, first Klingon and now Cylon?

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd love Haskell.

I hear a lot of scheme-brained hares saying this.

But I assure you, you're wrong.

Shite

[Hognoxious]

The language features, an emphasis upon readability and a strong bias toward omission or elimination of potentially-harmful constructs

Like that comma?

Re:Enough already.

[Mitchell314]

Honestly, I'd be happy with just a C variant with built-in string support.

So...Off-brand Scala?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading the language description, I don't see anything notably distinct from Scala. If anything, Ceylon seems a bit clunkier. The one upside appears to be baked in translation into JS, but others have already provided a Scala -> JS parser.

Ceylon?

[rssrss]

Shouldn't it be Sri Lanak?

Re:Ceylon?

[rssrss]

Serendib is the Arabic name for the Island, and Serendip in Persian. A Persian folk tale "The Three Princes of Serendip" became known in England through a 16th century Italian translation. The protagonists of that story were in the habit of discovering of things they were not seeking. In 1754 Horace Walpole, English writer and parliamentarian, coin the English word "serendipity" to capture that happy characteristic.

Taprobane, a Greek name for the island, would be another literary allusion.

Concurrency

[emorning9707]

I have no interest in a new language that has concurrency story at all.
Any new language needs to address the biggest development challenge of this time - coding for multiple cores.

Thank goodness

[fyngyrz]

...for Python.

I can continue to completely ignore the incredible, writhing mess that is java and its ecosystem.

Go ahead, mod me down, then go back to fighting with Java. I'll just continue being productive. :)

Re:Thank goodness

[RightSaidFred99]

No, he probably means writing gobs and gobs and gobs of difficult to support and debug software. But yours is right too,

Fuck using a scripting language for anything beyond a "script".

Re:Enough already.

[ReAn1985]

D does!. But D also has so many neat features.

D is wonderful, and it can interop with C / C++ or write inline ASM for you micro-optimists out there.

Re:Brain Dead

[Kongming]

People do not think in types.

Piaget would disagree with you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)

Re:Enough already.

[ebno-10db]

There are too many programming languages.

Some people describe the recent increase in the number of languages as the Cambrian explosion, but what we need now is a mass extinction.

Red Hat's plans

[Kongming]

I am curious as to Red Hat's practical motivations for creating this language. Specifically, do they plan on integrating it in their existing business or projects in any way?

Re:harmful constructs

[preflex]

That example does not compile in Ceylon with a compile error that disproves your claim:

expression must be of boolean type: Integer is not assignable to Boolean

variable value x = 3;

if ( x = 4 ) {

}

if(x=true) ...

This is still bad.

Re:But..

[TechyImmigrant]

Only once.

That's the point - you can never re-assign to a variable.

It felt like a kick in the monads.

YABL

[iliketrash]

Yet Another Brace Language

Re:Fits partially with tradition

[narcc]

Pure practicality?

PHP didn't even start out as a programming language. Even now, you can happily look at it as a bunch of stuff that makes it easy for people make dynamic websites. It is clearly quite successful. It's successful because it was really good at doing the job it was, er, "designed" to do.

PHP, then, would fall neatly under the "successful languages" category.

Hate it all you want. Bitch and moan on Slashdot 'till your fingers bleed. It's not going away any time soon. There is no alternative that is even half as easy to set up and use. There is no suitable replacement. That "unusable" language just happens to be the best thing around.

I point out this obvious fact because it drives morons incapable of forming their own opinions crazy. With any luck, they'll stop polluting every programming related thread with their miserable whining.