[strkek]

The _only_ downside I find of Elixir is that it looks too Ruby-ish to my taste. I'm still waiting for the day a C-like language that runs on BEAM becomes mainstream enough.

[StavrosK]

Here's my thought process while reading your comment, which illustrates why we can't have nice things:

> The _only_ downside I find of Elixir is that it looks too Ruby-ish to my taste.

Yeah, preach it!

> I'm still waiting for the day a C-like language that runs on BEAM becomes mainstream enough.

Eww.

[strkek]

Haha yeah, I've become too used to C-like syntax (C, Go, Rust, etc).

I wouldn't mind a Lisp syntax too, but Ruby and ML are definitely a "no" from me. I just can't bring myself to like them. Their syntax feels too "loose", not sure if that makes sense.

Btw, I know there are some Lisp-like implementations out there, but same criteria applies: still not mainstream enough as of now.

[StavrosK]

No, I agree with you completely, I'm just remarking on how everyone will have different aesthetics and things they're used to, and, ultimately, that might not be a valid complaint. Like, sure, I don't like Ruby's syntax much, but if the ecosystem is good and the language is a joy to write, eh, I'm going to compromise because you can't please everyone's subjective preferences.

[Dangeranger]

There is Lisp Flavored Erlang (LFE) from Robert Virding that you may enjoy[0]

[0] http://docs.lfe.io/current/

[krick]

Could you clarify, what's wrong with the Ruby syntax, exactly? I don't think there's a single programming language I like in terms of the syntax, but I don't see anything really wrong with Ruby. Surely not to the point I wouldn't use otherwise nice language because of it. Is python a no-no as well?

[strkek]

It's not "wrong"; it just doesn't appeal me.

- `elsif`

- `end`

- `unless`

- `a unless b`

- `f 1` vs `f(1)`

- Implicit method calls (`f` vs `self.f`). I know both have different behavior, I just don't like this "implicit self".

... etc.

I find Python okay-ish though, as paradoxical and nonsensical as that might sound. But in my toolchain Python has been reduced to little more than a calculator, since it's been replaced by Go for most of my automation needs.

Btw, friendly reminder that this is my subjective opinion regarding my own tastes, not absolute truth on aesthetics.

EDIT: Formatting.

[mercer]

Speaking for Elixir, a few notes:

I rarely find myself using if/else statements and I definitely avoid 'unless'.

One of the 'Rubyisms' I really disliked was the optional parentheses for method calls. While these are still optional for good reason, in practice this is no longer the case. The formatter will add parentheses and IIRC the compiler will give you a stern lecture too.

Obviously taste is subjective, but I do agree it matters.

I'd say if the Ruby-like syntax is what keeps you from trying Elixir, remember that's it's only skin deep and at least for me, the bad stuff is not really there compared to Ruby.

Furthermore, the advantages of having a functional and 'lispy'/homoiconic language that doesn't look like my bathroom floor after clipping my toenails is worth any remaining 'niggles' like the begin/end thing, or optional [] in the last parameter of a function call, etc. (which just like the optional parentheses is there for a very good reason).

[heavenlyblue]

He thinks the syntax doesn’t “pop”, clearly.

[erokar]

I had the exact same reaction.

> The _only_ downside I find of Elixir is that it looks too Ruby-ish to my taste.

Granted. More ML-like would be nice.

> I'm still waiting for the day a C-like language that runs on BEAM becomes mainstream enough.

WTF!?

[ancarda]

>I'm still waiting for the day a C-like language that runs on BEAM

I used to have a similar desire!

I actually started working on a language that transpiled to Haskell, like CoffeeScript -> JS. What I found, however, is a lot of little ways to make it more and more terse, until I ended up with something resembling Haskell’s syntax.

After this happened several times, I had some new found appreciation for Haskell’s syntax. It’s god awful for someone coming from a C-like background, but that seems like a very temporary problem.

I went from hating Haskell’s syntax so much I wanted a language wrapping it, to realizing it’s actually rather well thought out and other languages have a lot of noise to them. Lots of curly braces and semicolons that seem to mostly be there to make writing a compiler easier.

I still love C-like syntax, and still don’t like Haskell’s syntax, but not enough to write a CoffeeScript-like language.

[jfhufl]

Funny, I love Ruby and it's my primary language of choice, but I'm a heretic, using braces whenever I can:

    # events per day
    ndbh.fetch('select ts from tbl').all.map { |row| 
        row[:ts]
    }.map { |t|
        t.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
    }.each { |day|
        days[day] += 1
    }

(yes this could be conciser)

This is generally frowned on, and I'm sure everyone who likes having this style

   foo
     .map {}
     .select {}
     .blah {}

will frown as well, but it's so much more visually appealing to me, coming from a C/perl background when I first encountered Ruby (many years ago).

Funny how important syntax is. So easy to look at code in another style/language and go THATS NOT RIGHT!!

[strkek]

> Funny how important syntax is. So easy to look at code in another style/language and go THATS NOT RIGHT!!

I'm waaay too picky in this aspect. I once was reading about Ada (before my bias towards C-like languages kicked in). It looked interesting and all, and I was like "Hmm, not bad, learning this might be interesti--"

> Put_Line

Nope.

The irony here is, my current language of choice is Go, and tests must be named like `TestType_Method` and I'm like "arrrgggghhh".

EDIT: Btw I don't really mind indentation styles, brace placement, "dot placement" (like your example) and those things, as long as they're consistent across the codebase.