[cb321]

I hear the D compiler has pretty fast compile times. I'm not sure how low the syntactic noise can be gotten. Of course, with very slow compiles it will mostly seem not very pointful.

It works with a C backend [1], too, and TinyCC/tcc can compile & launch programs in 1-2 milliseconds - faster than the start up time of most interpreters, actually. With a quick changeover to 'gcc -O3' for bigger data inputs/a more saved-away-tool. Personally, I find the C backend too syntactically noisy and Nim programs run as fast as optimized C anyway. So, I only ever use the Nim one.

Anyway, I think it's probably at least a good teaching tool for kids to get comfortable with code generation thinking, etc. A DSL you invent yourself might be easier to remember than a brand new foreign prog.language like sed/awk/'perl -na' that also have implicit loops. With Python you could probably get pretty far just doing 'eval'. At the least, even if you cannot remember your own DSL, well then this will help you appreciate the challenge prog.language designers face. So, either way it's kind of a pedagogical win.

And even if you don't connect CSV column headers with variables/etc, as Ben observes it's not an awful way to test out little "How do I use this <MY PROG LANG> library?" utterances. Bash/zsh become your repl with their shell history/etc.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30191905