[Info-vax] The Kotlin language, something for VMS as well?

[Dirk Munk]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 7/11/2017 7:24 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 7/11/2017 10:21 AM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>>> I read an interesting story about Kotlin, a kind of next generation 
>>> Java.
>>>
>>> It has many similarities with Java, but also some big improvements.
>>>
>>> At the moment you can compile a source to a .jar file, and run it 
>>> with a Java Virtual Machine, or compile it to Javascript.
>>>
>>> However, in future (already in test phase), it will be possible to 
>>> compile Kotlin programs with a LLVM compiler, and produce executables.
>>
>> Kotlin is getting some traction in the Java community.
>>
>> Many think that Scala even though promising is too complex
>> of a language and that Kotlin may be a better choice.
>>
>> But I would expect most of its usage to be in the JVM world.
>>
>> Browser (JS transpiling) and iOS (LLVM) is side shows.
>>
>> But definitely an interesting language.
>>
>
> And after just a short glance at the reference manual it has me
> rolling on the floor.
>
> Potential for strange and hard to locate errors - see colon.
> Functions that return no value - I thought void was added to C for a 
> reason?
>
> Haven't yet come to the part that explains just why we needed another
> language.
>
> bill
>
>

Well, there are about 10,000 computer languages around. I suppose 99,9% 
will be script languages. Why we need them? I don't know, a few dozen 
should be enough I think.