[ecolak]

It's a pity that we are still talking about things like syntax in the context of a next big language. Programs are still full of bugs, especially concurrent programs, lots of time and effort is still spent on testing. At this day and age, the NBL should be a language that helps or guides a programmer write correct concurrent programs with good performance. It should prevent programmers from making mistakes as much as possible. I think the NBL will be in the same school as Erlang and Scala.

[dsymonds]

Syntax is very important for a programming language. It's in your face all the time. A serious downside to many programming languages is their awful or inconsistent syntax, and that results in code that is hard to read and comprehend even before trying to understand what the code is doing.

[ecolak]

It sure is important but who is to say C-style syntax is better than Lisp-style syntax and vice versa. Obviously the NBL should have a sensible and consistent syntax but it has to have a lot more than that to be the NBL. C-style syntax is definitely NOT a must have.