Re: [boost] Introducing the Backbone++ Programming Language

Subject: Re: [boost] Introducing the Backbone++ Programming Language
From: Phil Bouchard (philippeb8_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-19 12:03:53

On 07/19/2017 03:08 AM, Gavin Lambert via Boost wrote:
> On 19/07/2017 17:19, Phil Bouchard wrote:
>> (The former language name is already taken by Microsoft)
>
> The new one might be confused with http://backbonejs.org/...

I saw that and that's why a added a ++ prefix.

>> By taking advantage of the simplicity of the code of Javascript, the
>> power of C++ and the deterministic C++ memory manager Root.Ptr, I
>> decided to write my own programming language which takes advantage of
>> all these powerful features.
>>
>> On the downside Javascript suffers from a slow garbage collector that
>> kicks in randomly which makes it impossible to write real-time engines
>> and C++ just doesn't have any objective memory manager up to this day.
>>
>> My initial attempt was to convert Javascript into C++ but then the
>> principle of 'closures' and 'escape analysis' inlaid with Javascript
>> just makes it impossible to get rid of the garbage collector. So if we
>> sacrifice these principles away then we can integrate Root.Ptr and
>> take advantage of the power of C++ and the true flexibility and
>> run-time features of Javascript.
>>
>> It has to be noted that BB++ is an extension of C++ and therefore
>> everything we can do in C++ can also be done in BB++ and vice-versa.
>
> You might get more attention if you had documentation on the language
> itself and how it extends C++ and what benefits that provides.

I will create documentation but I just wanted to finish up core features 
of the language first.

But basically:

- It uses powerful features of C++ such as multiple inheritance and 
virtual inheritance implicitly, which makes Root.Ptr unbreakable.

- I cleaned up Root.Ptr to be scope-based and you can't unify entire 
sets anymore but you can just "upscale" branches of a scope with lower 
precedence. This means a scope "jails" everything, including cycles, but 
if you assign a pointer of this scope to a pointer of a higher scope 
then this branch of objects will "upscale" to the pointer having higher 
scope. More to come.

- ...

> Talk of sacrificing closures is a little worrisome; closures are an
> important feature of JS (and also of C++).

Well in Javascript closures lead to escape analysis which requires 
garbage collection so that's out of the question. And from my experience 
closures can be converted into more conventional forms. For example read 
only values can always be passed in as function arguments and write 
values can be returned as an array of values. Also in general 
asynchronous functions modify only global scope objects like 'document' 
and 'location' so that closures are not vital.

Furthermore in C++ we can still write C++ lambdas all we want.

Regards,
-Phil