I think that languages that are a just thin shell on top of C (as opposed to languages that merely target C, e.g. Chicken Scheme) might have some potential. I'll call this coffeescriptification--still eagerly awaiting the first transpiled language that does nothing but remove C's braces and semicolons. If someone doesn't do it by next April Fools, I certainly will (I already have the name in mind: Glee (the italics are part of the name, and mandatory)).
Sounds like what you're looking for is the original Bash source code, circa 1977, for example [1]:
LOCAL STRING copyto(endch)
REG CHAR endch;
{
REG CHAR c;
WHILE (c=getch(endch))!=endch ANDF c
DO pushstak(c|quote) OD
zerostak();
IF c!=endch THEN error(badsub) FI
}
Applicable macros if you want to give your code that classic ALGOL 68 smell in [2].
I remember going through that code, and wanting to simultaneously reach for a spraycan of holy water, and claw my eyes out.
Similar efforts (the linguist at DRI who did a #define of totally new control structures . . . in Russian, though he wasn't Russian, it was just a lark) are why we can't have nice things.
I too am looking for this in Java. Especially if the transpiler was easily extendable to add your own language features. The key would be to make sure it transpiles both ways so that it could be adopted in a corporate, Java-only environment.
One thing often overlooked in language design is the filename. It's 2012, why are languages still stuck with IBM-era filename extentions when they could use unicode?! For instance:
Rust: filename.ℛ
Java: filename.☕
Glee: filename.☺
Isn't that just so much clearer and nicer-looking than ".rs" or ".java" or ".g"? It's really the fine aesthetic points like this that can make or break a language.
Brilliant. I'll be sure to mention your <s>name</s> memory address in the foreword of the obligatory O'Reilly book (taking suggestions for the cover animal; I'm partial to the thylacine, myself).
One suggested improvement: Rust's extension should preferably be .® to jive with the language's official logo.[1] And with the advent of emoji, we can give Perl a file extension of .🐪 (Unicode Character 'DROMEDARY CAMEL' (U+1F42A)). Perl 6 can get the bactrian camel instead.
It's not clearer at all for me, especially when some of these characters won't render reliably on several platforms (for instance, the java char isn't showing in this browser right now).
Extensions and filenames can be made not to be so central, which I'd consider a more reasonable development over superficial silly hacks like that. This is IDE domain, definitely in 2012 and for years to come.
If you want to render your extensions to funny happy Unicode symbols in your specific purpose file manager, then fine by me. Actually storing filenames like that would just make you a number of new enemies.
