Alternative /hipster/ syntaxes for D

[ezdiy]

On Thursday, 29 March 2012 at 10:06:20 UTC, simendsjo wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:47:54 +0200, ezdiy <eezdiy at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> D syntax being C-ish one is great for oldschool class of 
>> programmers coming C/C++/Java/C# backgrounds, and although 
>> it's quite conscise one compared to, eg. javas, it's still 
>> much on the overly verbose side for some people (ie. at least 
>> for me :)
>>
>> The question is, how one would go around to successfully 
>> implement an alternative modern syntax to "fix" this. Are 
>> there some attempts out there?
>>
>> I'm talking among the lines of translators for popular 
>> languages such as Lua (http://moonscript.org/) or Javascript 
>> (http://coffeescript.org/). For statically typed example, take 
>> a look at http://live.gnome.org/Genie for Vala.
>>
>> My idea is something like: try to keep as much of original D 
>> grammar as possible, but add a lot of syntactic sugar, f.e.:
>>
>> - strip perceived "bloat" - by default, all variables auto, 
>> only basics of OO (everything virtual and public..) exposed 
>> etc...
>> - python's indentation blocks, instead of {}
>> - line decorators, such as: a = b if c
>> - multiple return values (either hack the compiler to have em, 
>> or add *a lot* of boilerplate to the translator to use tuples)
>> - your ideas?
>>
>> Another issue is how to go around implementation. My bet is to 
>> start with some already existing 1:1 D translator which has an 
>> actual AST state (is there something like that?) and then try 
>> to retrofit it with as much of the hipster stuff until things 
>> start to get overly ambiguous :)
>
> http://delight.sourceforge.net/

dang, i fail at google once again. thanks!