
Stanza: a new optionally-typed general-purpose programming language - trishume
http://lbstanza.org/
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dang
We moved most of the comments from this thread to the creator's Show HN, which
was posted a few days ago and didn't get much attention:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11717561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11717561).

We'll roll back the clock on that post so it gets to the same place on the
front page that this one was.

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uptownfunk
Post from the original author of the language-

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11717561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11717561)

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boardwaalk
I like what I'm seeing so far. The mix of ease of prototyping (e.g. not
fighting the type system if you don't want to) and powerful constructs from
functional programming land (map and friends, currying) and powerful function
overloading is nice. And the syntax is concise yet readable.

One comment on the website: The only font-family specified for code is Menlo
so I see an ugly variable width font on my PC :-(.

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uptownfunk
Can we port numpy/sklearn to this?

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Grishnakh
How many more new languages do we need? This is getting ridiculous. What does
this thing do that Python doesn't do?

~~~
DigitalJack
How many pointless comments do we need? This is getting ridiculous. What does
your comment add to the conversation that a million other whiners don't do?

~~~
Grishnakh
It points out that we don't need more and more computer languages that no one
uses. If you can come up with a language that really makes new contributions
or really works better than the existing ones, great, but instead it seems we
just have a bunch of me-too languages doing almost the same thing. Languages
aren't useful unless there's a critical mass of people developing them, making
libraries for them, making good compilers for them, and providing mindshare
for them, so that there's enough people competent in them to use them. This is
why languages like C and C++ are still used even though there are many valid
criticisms of them and supposedly superior alternatives have been developed:
the alternatives just haven't been good enough, in many/most cases, to justify
switching. C++ may have its warts, for instance, but with all the libraries
that exist for it and all the existing code and all the workers familiar with
it, it usually makes sense to stick with it rather than switch to something
like D or Rust or Swift or Go unless you have a really good reason (like
you're developing on iOS where Swift is really well-supported).

These days, Python is the de-facto standard for general-purpose type-optional
programming, and has a huge amount of libraries and mindshare, and is growing.
So why do we need a clone?

~~~
pkroll
The alternatives to C/C++ are so popular that most programming is not done in
C/C++ anymore, so your premise seems off. The alternatives have done
stunningly well.

Rarely, RARELY is someone going to make a language that's radically better
than what's currently available. But every new language is a chance to step in
the right direction, or confirm that nope, no one wants something like this.
We need MORE languages. Hundreds, a thousand more. Mostly they won't be used,
but sometimes things will move forward.

