I found it fairly easy to pickup syntax since they had many similarities with each other. How to represent functions, assignments, if/for/while seems quite consistent.
I found Arturo quite hard to grasp and make sense of.
However - and not because I'm the author of the language - once you get the general idea of Arturo (or any of the languages of the Rebol family: be it Rebol, Red, or Arturo), I assure you that you will find it very tempting not to ever go back to the C-inspired languages.
If I could sum up the whole (not-so-)syntax of Arturo, I would say that every "command" takes takes the necessary parameters on its right. And that's pretty much it.
print 10 ; that's a valid function call for example
or
print add 1 2 ; that's also a valid function call (or 2, to be precise)
and...
a: 1 + 2 ; that's how you "assign" meaning to a symbol
other than these super-basics, having a look into the library is pretty much all you'll need in order to get started.
I guess this isn't that difficult. :)
P.S. Feel free to ask any question you want. Feedback and input of any kind is more than welcome too. Also, our Discord channel is fairly active, so... I would even invite you there, so that we could actually exchange ideas about it in a more... interactive way.
Well, perhaps it does take some getting used to, but as soon as you appreciate its simplicity, you'll most likely love it. Former REBOL addict speaking. Have a look at this QuickSort implementation -> https://arturo-lang.io/playground?example=sorting%20algorith...
Thanks a lot for your kind words. I really appreciate it! :)
Regarding "?"-functions.
Yes, the idea was this: to separate "normal" functions (that is, functions returning something or altering a value in-place) from functions returning a boolean values - let's call them predicates. That's not a rule, it's merely by convention (at least in the built-in library).
Re: "if" vs "if?", as I said before... the second one is a predicate, meaning: it does return a boolean value (that of the passed condition parameter). And the main use is... chaining with an "else". ;-)
Thanks a lot for your kind words! I've worked very hard on it - both the language and the website - so, I definitely appreciate it. Feel free to join the community and let me know in case you have any questions whatsoever! :)
I've done my best. As for the inspiration, as I've said before, although the two languages (or the 3 of them, if I include Red) did end up looking quite similar, when I started out I had no knowledge of Rebol (other than the name). So, basically, I designed something from scratch, with its own characteristics. Now, given that, afterwards I sure have studied Rebol/Red a lot, and I must admit that both have served as an interesting source of ideas as well.
Looking forward to your feedback once you play a bit with it! :)
No offence taken. I guess this (quite common) question could go for a wide variety of things... but then, many things would have been left without been invented or even tried. Now, to try to properly answer your question: I guess the simple answer was that I couldn't find what was I was looking for - in a language, in this case. So, I decided to create it myself. :)