11. F#<p>F# is a mixture of C#, OCaml and Haskell. F# will be included in the next version of Visual Studio so it's no longer just a research language. Performance is similar to C# but coding in it is faster in my experience and above all a lot nicer if you like functional programming. Because it runs on the .NET VM or Mono VM it has good multicore support unlike OCaml. Haskell is more powerful as a language, but also has it's weak aspects. The main thing F# is missing imo in comparison to Haskell is type classes. And of course the Haskell community.
I find Self to be worth checking out, as well (<a href="http://research.sun.com/self/" rel="nofollow">http://research.sun.com/self/</a>) if for no other reason than seeing how fast dynamic languages can be. The research that went into it--techniques for blazing fast implementations of highly dynamic, object-oriented languages--has become especially relevant and provides the basis for many of the numerous new Javascript vms (especially V8).<p>With regards to Smalltalk and its incredible reflective abilities, this video from OOPSLA'08 ("Smalltalk Superpowers") is particularly amusing: <a href="http://www.veoh.com/videos/v163138695pJEMGmk" rel="nofollow">http://www.veoh.com/videos/v163138695pJEMGmk</a>. Unger even does a pretty neat demo of Self.
I'm curious if anyone has any experience with Io (<a href="http://iolanguage.com/" rel="nofollow">http://iolanguage.com/</a>). The description sounds like an appealing combination:<p><i></i><i>Its unusual, minimalist and yet elegant and powerful syntax reminds of Smalltalk, but the language goes far beyond that. Io is an object-oriented, prototype-based, message-based and fully-reflective programming language. This means that you use messages like in Smalltalk, you create objects like in Javascript and every bit of your code can be inspected and passed around as you see fit.</i><i></i>
Noticeably missing from this is Maroon, the Ultra High Level Programming Language<p><a href="http://mattmaroon.com/?p=337" rel="nofollow">http://mattmaroon.com/?p=337</a><p>I guess I should have paid that guy on elance his $1,000 to code it up in C for me.
<i>"Unlike other Lisps (and Schemes) you may have encountered before, Clojure comes with some interesting additions: [...]
Many pre-built data structures, like Vectors, Maps, Sets, Collections, …"</i><p>Here I stopped reading.
Hmm,<p>Nice to have all the up-and-coming languages lined-up in an internal comparison. I like Lua, Haskell and Io. I think that future languages will have to have a cleaner rather than an uglier look and syntax. For that reason, I have a visceral reaction to scala and factor. Even the one-line examples I've seen of these language have look like gibberish. I'm sure they are great in many ways but don't want them to succeed since they will make my brain hurt more. Also, I think that they won't succeed for similar reasons.