> cd /home/africa
> mkdir canaan
> mkdir canaan/population
> mv nigeria/population/useful_ones canaan/population
> rm -rf nigeria
> rm -rf history/nigeria
> cd canaan/population
> touch start_from_a_new_beginning.sh
> echo "This is your last chance. F**k up again and I'll delete all of you!" >> start_from_a_new_beginning.sh
> ./start_from_a_new_beginning.sh

talk2hb1:
I dunno

samijay8:
I always have that love for computers, softwares, mobile and different innovation in computers, so I think going for programming is better too. Iknow iI suck in maths and paid a man wwho's is a VB.net developer for 20 years +. Sometimes I get the logic little by little but always tell me my maths is poor and maybe I may not be a programmer. I haven't get to him over a month cos I think I may have been wasting time over since cos of my maths problems. Do I really must be a maths genius to be a programmer

Craigston:
None that I've heard of. I recently got a whiff of Lisp and I'm itching to learning it soon. But those brackets...

asalimpo:

Language x lacks features a programmer wants, so he goes ahead and creates his own! Is that sufficient reason? No. The feature required could be incorporated back into language x and language x will evolve.

C# nko? java copycat. While microsoft could create c# because it had the resources to, It's existence wasnt a necessity. That it exists doesnt justify it's creation.
Or for intellectual stimulation of the creator.
What if microsoft instead of creating c# helped to invest in java, proposed their recommendations to java which was then incorporated into it? They'd be one less programming language on the planet.

The fact they're a plethora of programming languages doesnt mean that that is the way they need to be or that it's a good thing. Look at more established fields, you dont see such fragmentation. The fragmentation only exists in programming because the cost of doing so is low? (just a computer and so on).
Look at architecture, civil engineering, accounting, law etc - You dont see this.

So what did ceylon and kotlin bring to the table that made a light and day difference?
What did D bring that the next c++ standard couldnt have addressed?
Y are javascript developers decrying the churn out of so many frameworks?
Because Exerybody is doing it.
How many build tools do you need to build a java program? there used to be 1 now they're 3.
But how many operating systems do most people use - only 1. that one keeps evolving, getting better?
But the programming community isn't geared towards evolving what it has, no! They're obsoleting what they have in favour of new shiny things. As a matter of fact, people are expecting new languages to be released seasonally the way people expect the entertainment industry to churn out new movies etc. And the programming community is rising up to meet this demand.

asalimpo:
Pony? Another programming language! Warris happening.
These things are just coming outta the woodwork!!
Elixir is the buzz now. It hasnt died down, Nim, i read of some months ago but forgot the name.

Now pony? Are these people just out to fragment the market or are we seeing a web storm of programming languages? I'm yet to even look up ceylon or kiln.

Anyway, as they say in boxing, *gbagaun, gbagaun <bell rings>* "May the best man language win."
Pony doesnt even have a wikipedia entry!!
But with the flurry of languages coming out, trends is converging on unification . Using one language for one thing- that's y node is gaining traction. javascript in the browser and in the back end , displacing php.
I think some people have too much time on their hands, that's y , there's a new language everyday. Not that it's bad- but most of these languages barely have any kind of traction. They remain niche stuffs.
What's pony addressing that erlang didnt address? Concurrency? Erlang hit that on the head!!

elfico:
To say I am impressed is a highly exaggerated understatement.

Wow! This is really great.

If you can open source, it would be a really great motivation for Nigerian developers in particular and African in general.

Kudos and thumbs up...

ChinenyeN:
I look forward to seeing and hearing more. Certainly, I look forward to playing around with this language once you release it.

I have found every bit of information in this thread useful. I am no where near...

FincoApps:


I've been following this thread ever since you created it... just learning from the discussion and also admiring the intelligence displayed in the thread. (It's unlike Nigerians)

I was here today to respond to a comment that asked why people would use Astro.... My response would have been "personally because of the pretty name" but now it's been changed .

Great job on it by the way... I love how you agreed you are not sure of it's niche yet..... It's 100% normal... please go on with the great work

asalimpo:

Hey Nypro, good to meet you. The language i'm working on, is only a language in the sense that, variables can be created, functions can be invoked , decisions can be made ,if-else and looping thru collections can be performed. It's ultra tiny. It's syntax is very mundane and similar to any c,java programmer. no suprises.
It was written (still in progress) to get work done. So that i never have to spend more time writing the kind of code this language is designed to solve. It's unoptimized and i'm just using brute-force logic/thinking to put it together. I'll publish it here when i'm done. Compared to what you guys are working on, its a toy.
The typing is dynamic . It's hundred percent functional. u pass arguments to a function, invoke it, get a value. It's written from the point of view of the compiler/parser writer rather than the user. Because of this,
its syntax is a bit not too user friendly. e.g
no infix notation.
because, it's just cumbersome on the backend re organising things into <function> <args> format.
so the user just has to do manually from the get go.
That means, addition will be +(2,3,4,5) and not 2+3+4+5.
so the compiler can call function '+' and pass it arguments 2,3,4,5 - without needing to reorganized them
as would be the case if they were infix based.
Creating an extensible type system though is quite knotty.
It's things we take for granted when using languages but how does one hack it all together neatly?
The inheritance heirarchy of types has to be created and the type inferrer has to know how to intelligently
infer parent types from subtypes if the need be. abstract parent types have to created if need be.
All this things have to be done , just to get a little functional script to run!!! see work!!
But without this general groundwork it will not be possible make something generically usable!! AFAIK.

Why am i creating it? I want to automate some tasks and abstract the process generically enough that variations of such tasks can be addressed quickly whenever they arise. Hence this!
Maybe if i knew python, it wouldnt be necessary. But ...

func +(...args): 
     sum(args)

func +(a, b): 
     a + b

+(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9

Craigston:
@appcypher
Will there be support for templates (function/class templates) and function overloading in Astro? I've found those features useful in C++ (well, templates may have performance overhead in execution time for an interpreted language, but they're powerful; will there be a way of compiling Astro?).

Will there be Perl-style regular expressions (like PCRE), or are you using a different regex engine?
I actually don't understand what Algebraic data types are (they seem to be related to functional programming); can you help me explain them.

azibit:
Speed of Execution is Overrated
One programming language is usually faster than the other and the speed of execution is usually one of the key reasons why a certain language might be preferred over the other. However, you should not become obsessed with speed of execution while deciding which programming language to use for a project because of speed.

Java is fast but C is faster. So should I design my application with C because of the speed. Speed is not the all time determinant of what you should do. This is because it usually take a badly designed application for users to figure out how slow an application is.

Python is indeed very slow in execution but you do not log onto dropbox and begin to complain that the application is slow. In fact, if you do not know that the application is built using python, you would not have anything to say about the speed.

I write about the issue of speed because you see a new framework or language comes out today with the hype of being faster. Speed of execution is far overrated and I believe languages should begin competing in which is easier to learn and use for building awesome applications.

With these, I believe every programming language would indeed be focused towards making it easier to use by human rather than to be obsessed about how the computer sees and runs it.

silento:
nice work but c pointer rules no pointer no coding

Craigston:
From the screenshot you shared, I find the syntax of Astro quite intuitive. For instance, in variable declaration,

var appcypher = Str

reads better as "variable appcypher equals a string". Somehow, I like it that way for declarations. But I'm comfortable with other styles too so I'm not trying to nitpick.
I see Astro supports list unpacking too; I've always loved it in Python.
On line 18 of the screenshot, you accessed more than one property of the 'facelessManipulator' type (object?) without repeating the type name. Nice syntactic sugar there.
Can you explain how inheritance works in Astro? It seems one can define certain members to inherit from a super type (line 13) without relying on member scope (public, private, or protected).

type Monkey
type Bird
type FlyingMonkey <: Monkey, Bird

type ab Person 
let person = Person # error! type Person is an abstract type and cannot be instantiated.

type Account
    let .password = Int # the dot signifies hidden access

let `rent = 30_000 # the back tick signifies private access

That logo in the terminal is so Juliac

Is that the atom editor?

tohero:
At first, I was understanding the comments. Now, I don't know if I understood what I taught I understand.

A very good one for the initiative.

As Astro gotten to the production level? I meant if it can be used in creating some apps right away.

If yes, are there any tutorials that introduces the Lang? Majority won't want to know the cores the thread has been discussing at first... Maybe later.

As Asalimpo has said, you may need to leap back and talk more on what makes astro better rather than the generics.

Nice one again!

CodeBlooded:
Class CodeBlooded{
Booloean alive;

While(alive){
breath(oxygen);
study(programming);
Bleep(pussy);
drink();
}

System.out.println("RIP"


}


}}

asalimpo:


I wasnt criticizing Astro's syntax in that rant. But rather the fact that some resources are not accessible to people who are interested because of some unnecessary barriers which turns off the uninitiated. I was talking about compilers and such books and stuffs. And stating my opinion on mathematics too, there have this artificial stiffness that people in the community (academics) feel have to be maintained to preserve that aura of mystery about the field. It's the same thing with the legal profession too. It was a general rant not directed at your language and syntax at all. We'd discussed that earlier b4. Actually i'm a fan of keep it ultra simple. And to do these, new concepts should be marketed in the symbols the uninitiated are already familiar with. That's y, python, presented in english-like syntax, is approachable to people new to programming.
And y maths is 'hard' because, i believe, wen thinking on a problem, the syntax could get in the way.
But's its all a philosophical rant,not a bash or critique at Astro, though i had previously critiqued it on that ground.

asalimpo:

My opinion is that in fields like these, they're no resources that can guide the curious and interested into learning steps of how its done. The dragon book has been criticized as being hard to read without math background. The entire process is made to look more complex than it is. Thanks to the community around it.
Mathematics for this very reason is archaic and needs an overhawl of its syntax,which is ugly and unfriendly.
I know it's a tall task but if you look at the trends of successful languages, you find that the familiar, e.g python, win market share over the unfamiliar. Just because of their syntax.
Just my rant, though.

stack1:
Hmm, this is a very interesting development, but i cant say much till we've been able to write some code for the interpreter to run

, but BIG KUDOS to you guys for even attempting something like this, so how do you generate machine code, LLVM backend ?

asalimpo:
I think those who've used multiple inheritance can vouch for it. I heard a c++ programmer who said java was rubbish (back in the day though).
But the industry is moving away from it. It was drummed into me through many java authors that multiple inheritance and goto is bad.
The problem with multiple inheritance is that one could betaking in far more than is necessary.
Inheriting and having access to all the codes in a higher heirarchy is in the least, philosophical impure.
So we're back to square one. Both approaches have major flaws.
A programmer could inherit from a class where he needs just one method, but gets exposed to
so many methods and client programmers using his code could exploit that access.
With interfaces, its cumbersome to implement unnecessary methods - but interfaces could be finetuned
such hat clients implements those that reduce boiler plates.

Anyway, since its all about where to move methods to in a parent class, can't he artificiality of enforced contracts in interfaces be solved by simple creating smarter interface objects? One in which methods that dont need to be implemented in sub classes can be made. I think java 8 has something like this. If it happens then,
the same things multiple inheritance seeks to accomplish will be achievable in single inheritance languages.
But be it as it may, with more power comes more complexity.

The 1 based indexing seems due anyway. It's one area noobs always get stumped when learning programming.

What Programming Languages Are A Waste Of Time To Learn?

Emmach10:
Good one Appy. Where can I download and test run the compiler?

asalimpo:
The multiple inheritance thing! It's considered bad design practice today. Modern languages are all single inheritance. Reduces complexity.
Maybe it's a fallout of ur c++ roots.


Actually, i think more programming languages will come out nigeria/africa in the future, because i find that as one programs, he tends to write automation scripts which are mini languages. In time, he'll want to know how
actual languages are written. So while we're late to the programming game, with time our maturity will manifest to the world.

asalimpo:

The UFCS thing is just greek to me.
The multi dispatch too. I use java, know a little of others, played with go last 2 year so i grok goroutines. But i dont know what the multi dispatch is.

func add(a = Int, b = Int)
func add(a = Float, b = Float)

type Person (name)

type Employee(name, job) <: Person

func details(p = Person):
    println(p.name)

let daniel = Person("Daniel Okoroha" )
details(daniel) # "Daniel Okoroha"

let george = Employee("George Adamu", "Digital Artist" )
details(george) # "George Adamu Digital Artist" 

len([1, 2, 3]) or [1, 2, 3].len(). 

On the github page, i saw no code. I wanted to download and check it out.

- Multiple inheritance!

orimion:
From the logo.png, it looks like index starts from 1(not 0). Why?

    Astro   -    1    2    3    4    5
                [h]  [e]  [l]  [l]  [o]
    Python  -  0    1    2    3    4

Astro  -> list[1] = 'h' # returns the element at the actual index
Python -> list[0] = 'h' # returns the element at the offset of the index

Astro  -> list[2:4] = 'ell' # returns the substrings at the actual indices
Python -> list[1:4] = 'ell' # returns the substrings starting from the offset of 
                            # the first index, but without the offset of the last index

asalimpo:
this is what i think any serious person wanting to consider the language will ask:
1) Why should i use ur language when there are other languages out there? In other words
what are the compelling objectives of the language?
It's this that are it's unique selling points.
see :
clojure - modern lisp on the jvm, fixed mutable state issues that makes multi threaded programing a pain.
python - easy to write and read.
ruby - fully oop. Make programming fun again
rust - c++ replacement, safer, system level lang etc
lua - very fast small efficient scripting language
erlang - highly fault tolerant. 99.999% uptime!
etc
Astro needs a compelling set of objective(s) to sell. I dont really get what they are.

2) What about libraries
Decent set of libraries to lure developers.
It's new but 2 needs addressing too asap.

asalimpo:


On amazon , with shipping it will be over $200! (>N100k). No sir,
It's not a priority now. Was wondering if i could get it locally. It's not a priority though.

DanielTheGeek:
Haven't talked much about it, but Friendosphere is a community that has lot's of features you'll love. Let me list out some features:

* In-built messaging feature (not e-mail to e-mail style messaging)
* Ability to create groups
* Ability to upvote and downvote
* Automatic movement of threads to the front-page (It's based on amount of upvotes the thread gets)
* Movement of off-topic threads
* Really cool ban bot (Won't hurt your feelings)
* And others