Crystal

[Graham Fawcett]

On Sunday, 17 February 2013 at 06:28:09 UTC, Ary Borenszweig 
wrote:
> Hello everyone :-)
>
> I follow this newsgroup from time to time. I like D templates. 
> I like the auto keyword. I like auto in templates. I love 
> efficiency and expressiveness.
>
> I believe in smart compilers.
>
> (you might remember me: I'm the author of Descent)
>
> I *really* like D, because it cares about one thing I care 
> about: *performance*. Let's save this world's energy. Let's 
> make a better world. Let's make users' life more enjoyable. 
> Let's be happy :-)
>
> But... do we really have to specify const pure safe nothrow and 
> whatnot? Can't the compiler be smarter? I'm sure there must be 
> a better way. Most new programming languages look like older 
> ones. Newness comes slowly...
>
> One time I asked in this newsgroup if it was possible to have 
> an "auto" keyword for function/method arguments. And... why not 
> make all functions/methods be templates on the type of its 
> arguments?
>
> I think nobody liked this idea. I said "Ruby is like this: you 
> never specify types in method definitions".
>
> "But Ruby is not efficient". "Ruby is a dynamic language". "D 
> is compiled, so it's faster". "Don't make the mistake of 
> comparing a dynamic language with a static/systems programming 
> language". This were some of the answers I got.
>
> I started thinking about this idea: a compiled language that 
> looked like a dynamic language. Is it possible?
>
> Today, I'd like you to take a look at what me and my friend 
> Juan have been working on for the last half month or so. It's a 
> new programming language which aims to be efficient, have 
> similar syntax to Ruby, and where you never have to specify 
> types of variables and arguments.
>
> https://github.com/manastech/crystal/wiki/Introduction
>
> I'd also like to ask you:
>
> 1. Do you know whether a similar language exists?

It's not Ruby-like, but Julia has some similarities:

http://julialang.org/

Best,
Graham