What is the best alternative to Boo?

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score 7 · Answer 1

Hy

Top Pro

Python interop

Hy compiles to Python's abstract syntax trees. Python can import Hy modules, and Hy can import Python modules. See More

Top Pro

Easier to read

Distinguished between arrays (or vectors) and function calls by using [] and (), respectively. See More

Top Pro

Copyfree and open source

Uses the MIT (expat) license. See More

7 0

score 24 · Answer 2

Xonsh

Top Pro

Easy to understand, Python-like syntax

Xonsh uses a syntax which is a superset of Python 3.4 plus some additional shell primitives. Because of the similarity to Python, which is famously an easy to understand programming language, the syntax of Xonsh is pretty easy to grasp too, even more so for Python programmers. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform support

Xonsh has native cross-platform support. See More

Top Pro

Command history on steroids - including output

Xonsh has one feature that can be considered particularly unique. It stores not just the commands you type, but their output, and doing a search on your history (configurably) can search the output as well. See More

24 5

score 98 · Answer 3

Racket

Top Pro

Racket was designed to teach functional programming from the start

Racket is based on Scheme (LISP Family) and is very similar to Clojure. So there are a ton of (). The reason it is easier to learn is that it is not trying to be "Pure" if there is even such a thing in terms of Functional Programming. The great thing about Racket is it has everything included. You get DrRacket for developing programs. You want to add a picture to your software you can insert pictures. If you want to add libraries just open the package manager. The Syntax is an opinion but it really does feel easier to see what is happening since everything is in brackets) Racket is a really a Programming Language for making Programming Languages. So there are smaller syntax Racket called Student Racket which makes things easier to pick up. See More

Top Pro

Realm of Racket is an excellent entry-level guidebook

Realm of Racket teaches the big-bang approach for managing world state. It does so by walking the reader through the development of small games. There are few guidebooks that are as useful and entertaining. See More

Top Pro

Free resources to Learn

Includes several free online books and great documentation. See More

Top Pro

Easily embeddable

Racket is famously embedded in the game engine underlying Naughty Dog's Uncharted and The Last of Us games, because it proved to be so easy to embed. See More

Top Pro

Syntax fits to functional programming

Although syntax is different from that of mainstream languages, S-expressions are a perfect match to functional programming. See More

Top Pro

Great RPEL IDEA included Dr. Racket

Top Pro

Active community

Racket has an active community of users/developers that makes it easy to get help when needed. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Windows, OSX

Price:Free

Site:racket-lang.org

Current stable version:6.11

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98 25

score 122 · Answer 4

Nim

Top Pro

Great metaprogramming features

There are generics, templates, macros in Nim. They can allow you to write new DSL for your application, or avoid all boilerplate stuff. See More

Top Con

Still in pre 1.0

Not very stable and has a rather small community. See More

Top Pro

Compile-time execution

Nim has built-in VM, which executes macros and some other code at compile time. For example - you can check if you're on Windows, and Nim will generate code only for it. See More

Top Pro

Really crossplatform

The same code can be used for web, server, desktop and mobile. See More

Top Pro

Strict typing

Checks your code at compile time. See More

Top Pro

Multi paradigm

Imperative, OOP, functional programming in one language. See More

Top Pro

Easy to read

Nim has a lot of common with Python in terms of syntax. Indentation-based syntax, for/while loops See More

Top Pro

Built-in Unicode support

You can use unicode names for variables, there is "unicode" module for operations with unicode See More

Top Pro

Type interferencing

You only need to specify types in your procedures and objects - you don't need to specify type when you're creating a new variable (unless you're creating it without initialization) See More

Top Pro

Has built-in unittest module

With built-in "unittest" module you can create test with a very readable code See More

Top Pro

Garbage-collected

You don't need to deal with all those manual memory allocations, Nim can take care of it! But also you can use another GC, or tweak it for you real-time application or a game See More

Top Pro

Easy to integrate with another languages

You can use Nim with any language that can be interfaced with C. There's a tool which helps you to create new C and C++ bindings for Nim - c2nim Also you can use Nim with Objective C or even JavaScript (if you're compiling for these backends) See More

Top Pro

Has built-in async support

Nim has "asyncdispatch" module, which allows you to write async applications. See More

Top Pro

Supports UFCS (Unified Function Call Syntax)

writeLine(stdout, "hello") can be written as stdout.writeLine("hello") proc add(a: int): int = a + 5 can be used like 6.add.echo or 6.add().echo() See More

Specs

License:MIT

OS:Windows, MacOS/iOS, Linux /Android/Termux, BSD, Solaris/SmartOS, HaikuOS, lots of others

CPU:All CPU architectures that have an ANSI C compiler

Site:https://nim-lang.org

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122 34

score 195 · Answer 5

Haxe

Top Pro

Compiles to multiple platforms and languages

Haxe allows you to develop for Web, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, OSX, Linux and others, all at once, without the need to switch languages and maintain separate code bases. This is possible because Haxe can compile to JavaScript, ActionScript, Flash AVM bytecode, C++, Neko, PHP, C# (.NET) and Java. Support for even more platforms and languages is under development. See More

Top Con

Bad support in some popular IDEs

While it has great support in Visual Studio Code and Vim for example, it still lacks support in some IDEs such as IntelliJ. See More

Top Pro

Powerfully expressive but easy to learn

The language was designed to be very expressive with the smallest possible amount of syntactic sugar. There are actually fewer keywords than other languages with similar power. See More

Top Con

You need to code interfaces to work with existing JavaScript code

Some popular libs like JQuery have maintained externs, for any specific code or lib already in JS you have to write the externs to use it in your haxe application. See More

Top Pro

Pick up errors at compile time

One big advantage over pure javascript, (or some other languages listed here) is that Haxe will pick up a whole range of errors when you compile, saving you the pain of having to try and debug them later. This includes everything from syntax errors ("Unexpected ;") to type errors ("Class user has no field username. Suggestion: username"). See More

Top Con

No Qt support

There is currently no support for Qt. See More

Top Pro

First class code completion

Code completion is built into the compiler and available to the IDE allowing for much smarter code completion that can actually parse and understand the syntax tree. See More

Top Con

Full programs only

You can create small utility functions with Haxe, but generally it is a lot more work than with other JS compilers. Haxe is best used when you have a larger project. See More

Top Pro

Syntactic macros

Syntactic macros allow you to extend compiler features at the syntax tree step. Macros come into play after code is parsed into the abstract syntax tree, and macros allow you to transform it before the rest of the compilation completes. This provides for immense power, while at the same time scoping the extensibility at a level that is powerful, but well constrained. See More

Top Con

It's not easy to convince people it's as good as it really is unless you can get them to really try it

Top Pro

Code reuse server side and client side

You can use the same classes on the server as you do on the client where applicable. This saves a lot of time. See More

Top Pro

Extremely fast compilation

Haxe can easily compile over 100,000 lines of code to JS in seconds on a mid-spec computer. See More

Top Pro

Ability to use existing JS libraries

Haxe has the ability to use "externs". These are haxe files which describe the usage of existing JS libraries. Get code completion and compile-time-checking for everything from jQuery to Node.js. Even without externs, native JS code can still be used through untyped code. See More

Top Pro

Similar to JavaScript and ActionScript 3

The language is very easy to learn for those with background in JavaScript or ActionScript 3. See More

Top Pro

Small, readable output

The output that is generated can be trimmed using "dead code elimination" to only include those functions and libraries that are strictly necessary. All code is very readable with only minimal extras for specific functionality. Small output is good for frontend development as file size is a major concern. See More

Top Pro

Large library support. From servers to games.

Haxelib (common library repo) and other sources contain large codebases for anything from cryptography to communications. A lot of these are fully cross platform and work with the JavaScript target. The JavaScript target can be used for everything from node.js server applications (with code completion) to games using either the Flash-like OpenFL library or direct canvas or WebGL programming. See More

Top Pro

Established project

Haxe has been around for more than 10 years (since 2005) and whilst not the most popular project, has had continuous growth. Highly unlikely to disappear or for support to stop. See More

Top Pro

Powerful type inference with strong typing

After a type is inferred from its context, it cannot be changed to a new type, and type safety is done at compile time so it stays safe without the extra maintenance required for static typing. See More

Top Pro

Algebraic data types and pattern matching.

Top Pro

Friendly community

Friendly community See More

Top Pro

Offload execution to the server with remoting

Using a remoting proxy you can get type safe server to client communications, allowing for remote method execution on the server as if they were part of the client side code. See More

Top Pro

Package management like Java

Package tree is just directory tree, it's wonderful! See More

Top Pro

Builtin conditional compilation support

Haxe supports conditional compilation, so depending on compiler flags Haxe will include or exlcude sections of your code. Making it easy to have debug and release builds. See More

Top Pro

Create without needing to be limited to a language, target, or commercial ecosystem

Top Pro

Available in NPM

Top Pro

Type safety for exísting JS libraries

Haxe compiler will check types when using externs for existing libraries. See More

Top Pro

Can create complex applications without needing webpack, npm or other crutches

Haxe has the power and expression to not need the npm dependancy hell that is common in js and typescript, bit it's still simple. See More

Top Pro

Abstract enums allow constants with exhaustiveness check

You can define constants in an abstract enum and when used in a switch/case statement Haxe checks for exhaustiveness, making sure every constant is covered - with no runtime implication. See More

Top Pro

Abstracts allows me to create more intative api's without runtime overhead

Top Pro

Ability to skip type checking when calling non Haxe code

You should use externs when calling non Haxe code, but if you just need to call one or two external JS functions, you can skip type checking by calling untyped code. See More

Specs

Price:Free, Open Source

Site:https://haxe.org/

Current stable version:3.4.4

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195 52

score 146 · Answer 6

Smalltalk

Top Pro

Environment of live objects

You can modify the system as it's running. You're "swimming with the fish", instead of probing a black box by remote control. See More

Top Con

OO is becoming obsolete

Smalltalk did it best, but the whole paradigm is a poor fit for the expected future multicore processors. Isolated mutable variables with no compile checks is a recipe for race conditions in multithreaded code. Beginners would be better off learning a functional language. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn and experiment

Top Con

Not common

Smalltalk missed an opportunity to become mainstream when its implementations cost $5000 per seat versus $0 open source. New open source implementations (Pharo, Squeak) have minor corporate backers but not yet an IT behemoth. Direct jobs are scarce (but indirectly Smalltalk experience is very well regarded). Online communities are relatively small. See More

Top Pro

Inspector makes objects transparent

Programmers must make detailed mental models of the system they are developing. Bugs usually happen when the mental model does not match the actual system. This is one of the greatest difficulties beginners have because most systems are so opaque. It takes a lot of effort to see what's really going on. But in Smalltalk this is much easier, thanks to the powerful tools included in the environment, like the object inspector. See More

Top Con

Not useful for mobile development

While Smalltalk is very powerful and easy to learn, it doesn't have a well supported mobile distribution, but you'll be spoiled for working in mainstream languages like Java, Swift or Kotlin where jobs are more readily available. See More

Top Pro

Internal source code and documentation

You can explore how everything works easily. See More

Top Con

Virtual machine in its own isolated world

Smalltalk wants to be the whole OS. While this has tremendous advantages internally, interacting with the world outside the VM is not as easy as pure Smalltalk and must be done via a Foreign Function Interface. See More

Top Pro

Superb Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

All tools (Inspector, Browser, Debugger etc.) are written in Smalltalk and are live objects in the environment. All sources are present, so that the tools can easily be studied, changed and experimented with. The same goes for the other components like the compiler, OS-Integration etc. See More

Top Con

Non-standard arithmetic ordering

Since every operation is considered a message sent sent is a specific order, all arithmetic operators have the same precedence. E.g. 2 + 3 x 4 translates to 2 + 3, and the result is multiplied by 4, giving an answer of 24 (instead of the correct answer - 14). Once you are learn this, it can easily handled using brackets, e.g. 2 + (3 x 4), but still a momentary suprise for beginners. See More

Top Pro

Pure and easy object orientation

Smalltalk is one of few languages that are purely object oriented. This provides a solid and easy to understand base on which to learn object oriented programming, the most popular approach to programming. See More

Top Pro

Agile "interactive" test-driven development

Smalltalk had the original (and still the best) unit test system that inspired it in many other languages (like Java's JUnit). Working with interactive live objects in Smalltalk style TDD makes it easy to teach and learn TDD. See More

Top Pro

Elegant syntax fits on a postcard

The syntax was designed to be easy enough for children to learn. Beginners can learn the language rules very quickly and then focus on programming without fighting the syntax at the same time. Things that have to be baked into the grammar in other languages are simple message sends with block arguments in Smalltalk. Expressions have only three precedence levels to worry about. See More

Top Pro

Inspired many other languages' object systems

Top Pro

Incremental compilation

Smalltalk provides an extremely fast code-compile-run-debug cycle. You don't have to stop and reset the world to tweak your program, since you can compile one method at a time while the environment is still running. This is great for beginners to experiment and prototype ideas. See More

Top Pro

Powerful integrated debugger

You can edit code and swap it in while the program is still running after an exception has already been signaled, or restart from anywhere in the call stack. You can inspect and modify the state of any object. Some Smalltalkers write unit tests and then program exclusively in the debugger. See More

Top Pro

Open source

MIT licensed implementations Pharo, Squeak, Cuis & Dolphin and GPL licensed GnuSmalltalk. See More

Top Pro

Graphical user interface

Beginners are usually stuck making command-line applications in other languages, because GUIs are too hard. Smalltalk GUIs are easy enough to start with. See More

Top Pro

Language uniformity

This leads to a very simple programming model (pure OO) that is still very powerful. A lot of stuff that is hard to implement in other languages is easier in Smalltalk. See More

Top Pro

Save and restore virtual machine image

A Smalltalk environment can save the state of a running program and later restore and resume execution. This includes the internal state of live objects, multiple thread stacks, and debugging sessions, making it easier for beginners to take the exact problem to an expert for assistance. See More

Top Pro

First-class functions with lexical closures

Also known as "blocks". These objects contain reusable snippets of code and as first-class objects they can be passed as arguments to other methods or blocks and also returned from them. "lexical closures" mean they retain access to the variables in the lexical environment they were written in, that is, in the surrounding code. See More

Top Pro

It invented a lot of stuff

Smalltalk is the inventor of Just-in-Time compilation and the MVC concept, refactoring through their so-called refactoring browser and it was also one of the first adopters of a language virtual machine, closures, live programming, test driven development, an IDE and the development of GUI`s. See More

Top Pro

As a first language, almost forces you to learn OO design

Hybrid languages (e.g., Java, C#, C++) make it easy to slip into procedural thinking. Smalltalk's pure OO approach makes it hard not to think in object-oriented terms. In addition, since the entire IDE and runtime components are there in the image for you to browse, you have plenty of examples of good OO design to learn from. See More

Top Pro

Provides a functional way to interact with objects

Many languages today use object orientation, while the most of them stock on the half way in that perspective. Smalltalk sees literally everything as an object and this includes things like the classes and primitive data types. There is are zero control structures such as selection and iteration, since all is done by sending messages to objects. It use a lot of concepts from Lisp in order to provide a nice experience for this pure kind of object orientation. It provides immutable data structures, closures, anonymous functions and higher order functions, while all those functions are objects. This is what makes Smalltalk so simple, elegant, and easy. All this counts for Pharo, while other implementations as Amber are probably feature complete to it. See More

Specs

OS:Windows, macOS, Linux

Current stable version:6.1

GZipped size:38MB

IDE Support:Self-Hosted

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146 46

score 85 · Answer 7

Julia

Top Pro

Strong dynamic typing

Dynamic and high level, but does not isolate the user from properly thinking about types. Can do explicit type signatures which is great for teaching structured thinking. See More

Top Con

Young language with limited support

Julia was released in 2012. Due to its short existence, there is a limited amount of support for the language. Very few libraries exist as of yet, and the community is still quite small (though growing quickly). See More

Top Pro

Almost as fast as C

Julia runs almost as fast as (and in fact in some cases faster than) C code. See More

Top Con

1-based array and column major

This design probably comes from Matlab, but makes it unnatural to interface C and C++ and python. See More

Top Pro

Great standard REPL

Out of the box Julia has a very good Read-Eval-Print-Loop, which both completes functions and types, as well as completion based on history of previous statements. It integrates well with the shell and has an excellent online help system. See More

Top Pro

Nice regular syntax

Julia code is easy to read and avoid a lot of unnecessary special symbols and fluff. It uses newline to end statements and "end" to end blocks so there is no need for lots of semicolons and curly braces. It is regular in that unless it is a variable assignment, function name always comes first. No need to be confused about whether something is a method on an object or a free function. Unlike Python and Ruby, since you can annotate the types a function operates on, you can overload function names, so that you can use the same function name for many data types. So you can keep simple descriptive function names and not have to invent artificial function names to separate them from the type they operate on. See More

Top Pro

Written in itself

The Julia language is written in itself to a much larger extent than most other languages, so a budding programmer can read through the depths of the standard library and learn exactly how things work all the way down to the low-level bit-twiddling details, which can be englightening. See More

Top Pro

Powerful n-dimensional arrays

Julia has built in n-dimensional arrays similar in functionality as Python's numpy. See More

Top Pro

Function and operator broadcasting

You can perform operations on scalars, for example 2^2 or [1, 2, 3].^2. See More

Top Pro

Function overloading

You can have multiple functions with the same name, but doing different things depending on function arguments and argument types. See More

Top Pro

Amazing learning curve

Julia requires no boilerplate code – a beginner needs to write only the parts they care about. This combined with the REPL provides the best learning experience available. See More

Top Pro

High-level code

Julia provides a high level of abstraction, making platform-independent programming trivial and easing the learning curve. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

Site:julialang.org

Current stable version:1.0

Type Model:Dynamically Typed

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85 35

score 219 · Answer 8

Haskell

Top Pro

Forces you to learn pure functional programming

It is pure and does not mix other programming paradigms into the language. This forces you to learn functional programming in its most pure form. You avoid falling back on old habits and learn an entirely new way to program. See More

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

Haskell lends itself well to powerful abstractions - the result is that even basic, commonly used libraries, while easy to use, are implemened using a vocabularly that requires a lot of backround in abstract mathematics to understand. Even a concept as simple as "combine A and B" is often, both in code and in tutorials, described in terms of confusing and discouraging terms like "monad", "magma", "monoid", "groupoid", and "ring". This also occasionally bears its ugly head in the form of complicated error messages from type inference. See More

Top Pro

Open source

All Haskell implementations are completely free and open source. See More

Top Con

Package manager is unstable & lacking features

Cabal (There are other choices but this is the most popular) can not uninstall a package. Also working at a few locations it is difficult to have the same environment for each one be the same. See More

Top Pro

Mathematical consistency

As Haskell lends itself exceedingly well to abstraction, and borrows heavily from the culture of pure mathematics, it means that a lot more code conforms to very high-level abstractions. You can expect code from vastly different libraries to follow the same rules, and to be incredibly self-consistent. It's not uncommon to find that a parser library works the same way as a string library, which works the same way as a window manager library. This often means that getting familiar and productive with new libraries is often much easier than in other languages. See More

Top Con

You need some time to start seeing results

Haskell's static typing, while helpful when building a project, can be positively frustrating for beginners. Quick feedback for errors means delaying the dopamine hit of code actually running. While in some languages, a beginner's first experience may be their code printing "Hello World" and then crashing, in Haskell, similar code would more likely be met with an incomprehensible type error. See More

Top Pro

Highly transferable concepts

Haskell's referential transparency, consistency, mathematics-oriented culture, and heavy amount of abstraction encourage problem solving at a very high level. The fact that this is all built upon little other than function application means that not only is the thought process, but even concrete solutions are very transferable to any other language. In fact, in Haskell, it's quite common for a solution to simply be written as an interpreter that can then generate code in some other language. Many other languages employ language-specific features, or work around a lack of features with heavy-handed design patterns that discourage abstraction, meaning that a lot of what is learned, and a lot of code that is needed to solve a particular problem just isn't very applicable to any other language's ecosystem. See More

Top Con

You have to learn more than just FP

Haskell is not only a functional language but also a lazy, and statically typed one. Not only that but it's almost necessary to learn about monads before you can do anything useful. See More

Top Pro

Referentially transparent

Haskell's Purely Functional approach means that code is referentially transparent. This means that to read a function, one only needs to know its arguments. Code works the same way that expressions work in Algebra class. There's no need to read the whole source code to determine if there's some subtle reference to some mutable state, and no worries about someone writing a "getter" that also mutates the object it's called on. Functions are all directly testable in the REPL, and there's no need to remember to call methods in a certain order to properly initialize an object. No breakage of encapsulation, and no leaky abstractions. See More

Top Con

Language Extensions lead to unfamiliar code

Haskell's language extensions, while making the language incredibly flexible for experienced users, makes a lot of code incredibly unfamiliar for beginners. Some pragmas, like NoMonomorphismRestriction, have effects that seem completely transparent in code, leading beginners to wonder why it's there. Others, like ViewPatterns, and particularly TemplateHaskell, create completely new syntax rules that render code incomprehensible to beginners expecting vanilla function application. See More

Top Pro

Very few language constructs

The base language relies primarily on function application, with a very small amount of special-case syntax. Once you know the rules for function application, you know most of the language. See More

Top Con

Symbols everywhere

Haskell allows users to define their own infix operators, even with their own precedence. The result is that some code is filled with foreign looking operators that are assumed to be special-case syntax. Even for programmers who know they're just functions, operators that change infix precedence can potentially break expectations of how an expression is evaluated, if not used with care. See More

Top Pro

Hand-writeable concise syntax

Conciseness of Haskell lets us to write the expression on the whiteboard or paper and discuss with others easily. This is a strong benefit to learn FP over other languages. See More

Top Con

Too academic, hard to find "real world" code examples

Top Pro

Functions curry automatically

Every function that expects more than one arguments is basically a function that returns a partially applied function. This is well-suited to function composition, elegance, and concision. See More

Top Con

Lazily Evaluated

Haskell's lazy evaluation implies a level of indirection - you're not passing a value, you're passing a thunk. This is often difficult to grasp not just for beginners, but for experienced programmers coming from strictly evaluated languages. This also means that, since for many, strict evaluation is their first instinct, initial expectations of a function's performance and complexity are often broken. See More

Top Pro

Easy syntax for people with a STEM degree

Since the basic syntax is very similar to mathematics, Haskell syntax should be easy for people who have taken higher math courses since they would be used to the symbols used in maths. See More

Top Con

Documentation for most packages is short and lacking

A few Haskell packages are well documented but this is the exception, not the rule. Most of the time a list of function signatures is what passes for documentation. See More

Top Pro

Easy to read

Haskell is a very terse language, particularly due to its type inference. This means there's nothing to distract from the intent of the code, making it very readable. This is in sharp contrast to languages like Java, where skimming code requires learning which details can be ignored. Haskell's terseness also lends itself to very clear inline examples in textbooks, and makes it a pleasure to read through code even on a cellphone screen. See More

Top Con

Curried type signatures obfuscate what were the in and out types originally

Top Pro

Quick feedback

It's often said that, in Haskell, if it compiles, it works. This short feedback loop can speed up learning process, by making it clear exactly when and where mistakes are made. See More

Top Pro

Popular in teaching

Haskell is really popular in universities and academia as a tool to teach programming. A lot of books for people who don't know programming are written around Haskell. This means that there are a lot of resources for beginners in programming with which to learn Haskell and functional programming concepts. See More

Top Pro

Powerful Categorical Abstractions

Makes categorical higher order abstractions easy to use and natural to the language See More

Specs

Site:https://www.haskell.org/

Paradigm:functional

Type System:static

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219 89