
Ask HN: What features or properties (from any language) are essential? - heyjudy
Without any particular religious One True Way(tm) flamewara, what do you expect in a modern statically-typed language?<p>- REPL&#x2F;debugger?<p>- Package manager&#x2F;TDD project watcher?<p>- C FFI without un&#x2F;boxing?<p>- Gradual typing&#x2F;type inference?<p>- Less punctuation?<p>- Shift-indentation blocks?<p>- GC or not to GC?<p>- Bare-metal executables &#x2F; static libs?<p>- Opt-in duck-typing and mandatory interfaces?<p>- Capabilities?<p>- Compiler in C but mostly self-hosted?
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TheAsprngHacker
I personally think that sum types (discriminated unions) are essential for a
"modern statically-typed language."

