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Ola Bini, one of the big guys behind JRuby, is developing a new programming language called: Ioke. It's influenced by Io, Lisp, Smalltalk and Ruby. Share your thoughts about this new dynamic programming language

NB. Question asked by schildmeijer

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Schildmeijer
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4 Answers4

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Seems interesting, but is currently just a proof of concept.

If you need something similar now, just take a look at IO language

Marko
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Ioke is quite an interesting language to play with to create DSLs. I find the simplistic syntax (everything, even control flow, is a message) that can be expanded interesting. Macro support in Ioke is great (retrieve parts of message before they are evaluated [or 'activated']).

Ioke is obviously still a very young project, but very promising.

Thinking about it further, I am a bit conflicted regarding the simplistic syntax as I'm still hoping for a tad more syntactic sugar -- for example for control blocks which are more expressive IMHO when using special syntax -- rather than being pure messages that must be implemented with the same bracketed syntax as any other message.

I guess this is a matter of taste -- do you keep the language definition simple and 'pure' or do you 'taint' it with more syntax and make it a bit more expressive?

Redbeard
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AFAIK this is just a one-man-show. It seems extremely unlikely that one person will be able to undertake all the work necessary to make a programming language popular, e.g. writing tools, libraries, etc.

So unless he can get a big company to back him and use his language or establish a community of IOKE developers, I would suggest his languages is doomed to failure, ho matter how performant/elegant it is.

On a more superficial level, I dislike the name IOKE, mostly because it's not at all obvious how it should be pronounced.

Dónal
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  • 'e is svedish ya? ze language, is a ioke? – Kent Fredric Jan 21 '09 at 13:40
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    JRuby has Sun's backing, so this'll probably get backed by them too. And Ruby was a 1 man show language. http://www.rubytips.org/2008/01/10/a-quick-dose-of-ruby-history/ – Allain Lalonde Jan 21 '09 at 14:56
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    One-man shows do not necessarily remain one-man shows. Most languages in use today can be traced to at most a few people, often just one. What you're saying is that the language is young, and that doesn't imply unsuccessful. – David Thornley Jan 21 '09 at 15:55
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    "JRuby has Sun's backing, so this'll probably get backed by them too" I find it hard to believe that Sun will 'probably' back IOKE just because they've also backed a different language in which the creator of IOKE is involved. – Dónal Jan 22 '09 at 17:49
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    Ioke has (to some extent) ThoughtWorks backing it. And, to be honest, it's waaaaaay too soon to say "Ioke has no community behind it". The language was released less than 2 months ago -- Ruby and Python took years before community was formed around them. – Carlos Villela Feb 06 '09 at 00:01
  • How can it be "waaaaaay too soon" to make an assertion about the present tense i.e. "has no community behind it"? – Dónal Feb 06 '09 at 05:50
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    I'm pretty sure all languages have to start small. Ioke now has many contributors, I hear. Clojure was a one man show as well, and look where it's gone. – Rayne Feb 10 '10 at 04:46
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I was very inspired by Ioke. Ioke ebnf syntax is a dozen of lines. But it can give me all I liked in Forth, C++ and JS. Also Ioke is brave to use characters beyond ascii-127 for operators.

Human mind can only deal with very simple things, but can abstract them into high order structures easily, and then deal with the abstraction as with the new simple thing. And then take few abstractions together and abstract on them again and again. Each time using some different ways to generalize simple things into a very simple thing.

Ioke allows you to create new ways to express your ideas on each different level of abstraction. You need a new syntax or new way to express on each level. You need a tool to create tools. And you do not want to get lost in nor abstration nor detail.

Ioke author sees properties of human mind, better than authors of other languages who are not brave enough to see that something is not only behind the monitor but also in front of it, which is a human being. But they are not to blame, because users of languages are blind to their own mind machinery as well. So Ioke is really a brave attempt to attack on flatness of other languages, and, therefore, an attack on flatness of the way we are learned to think.

exebook
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