Reia: Friendly, Ruby-style syntax on the Erlang VM

This is still very alpha, but I'm submitting this because I really hope this succeeds. Erlang is really powerful and provides more modern paradigms for concurrent programming that just are not easily implemented in other VMs. However, Erlang's prolog inspired syntax is a big turnoff to many programmers. This could be a breakthrough.

I too have been following Reia since he started it up and... well, I'm consistently disappointed. I'm putting this out there publicly because it's come up with co-workers. In the end, he's waffled with so many language design decisions that, in my opinion at least, it's turned into a language that on one end doesn't have the true syntactical flexibility of Ruby, and on the other side has buried a lot of what is most useful in Erlang. For alternatives I would suggest Lisp Flavored Erlang <a href="http://forum.trapexit.org/viewtopic.php?p=40268" rel="nofollow">http://forum.trapexit.org/viewtopic.php?p=40268</a> or Efene / Ifene <a href="http://www.marianoguerra.com.ar/efene/" rel="nofollow">http://www.marianoguerra.com.ar/efene/</a> - both of which do much better at being Erlang-(but-with-better-syntax).<p>Edit: This is referring to its current state only- I reserve the right to change my mind in the future (:

I feel that we spend too much time worrying about the syntax of programming languages. I don't find switching between typing in erlang/lisp/java/ruby code any more difficult. All I do is switch IDEs (or plugins) and I'm at about the same level of productivity typing wise.<p>Semantics are much more interesting to talk about, but it seems we never do talk about them. We rarely have holy-wars over the semantic differences between (for example) c and lisp, or lisp and Erlang.<p>There are certain problems that are easier to solve when expressed as many concurrent processes. In this same way, there are certain problems that are easier to solve when expressed as self modifying code or a tower of objects, or low level bit bashing.<p>At a certain level, different syntaxes do absolutely nothing for me. No matter what I'm doing with code, I am manipulating a syntax tree. I'm never thinking about the syntax on the page as the 'code,' what is on the page is just a representation of the 'code' that is in my head and being run by the computer. And the semantics of that 'code' is what influences how I use the language.<p>Syntax on the page is almost a deception. Kind of an illusion that influences you into thinking about the code in a certain abstract way (a spatial 'on the page' arrangement of different parts), when really, the code was already abstract to begin with (runtime execution 'arrangement' of the different parts).

This is a cool and fun project, but a lot of people in the thread are pretty confused about erlang syntax so I wanted to post this.<p>erlang's syntax is not some arcane afterthought, it may look strange or even "ugly" to people not familiar with it, but it has been very well thought out and purposeful, every time there is a choice between a beautiful construct that can add confusion, or a less elegant solution that is crystal clear, erlang chooses less elegant every time.<p>I have been doing javascript since I started programming and still get confused by its object model + prototypal inheritance, the same is true for pretty much every language, python, ruby, c++ etc going back to erlang is a refreshing break.

What would make this more attractive to me is a mechanism for <i>local</i> mutable state. Some algorithms are just easier to express if you're allowed to change the values of some local variables. Erlang has no shared mutable state, but as Haskell's State monad shows, it's perfectly possible (and often useful) to keep mutable state boxed off safely.<p>Since this can be transformed to tail-recursion, you should be able to implement it on the Erlang VM without too much trouble. Getting a convenient syntax and doing the transformation would be the hardest part.

Here's a question. Does there exist a decent stand alone representation (BNF or otherwise) of the Ruby grammar? I see all this stuff that says Ruby-style, and it looks almost like straight up Ruby. Moreover, I Google around for a Ruby grammar and can't find much of anything substantial, but I haven't looked in awhile. I've tried cruising the Ruby YACC file, but that's kind of a disaster. Is there good one that exists as a reference for 3rd party Ruby implementations?

I really like Reia and have been following it for sometime now, I hope to use it onces it makes into beta.

Still using rake for build?<p>Please rebar-ify!