Elena Programming Language

OK, we see a dynamic, late-binding, object-oriented, interpreted language with a VM.<p>If I were to try and make this language interesting to the HN audience, I&#x27;d start with two items:<p>* What is interesting in Elena, compared to Python?<p>* What is interesting in Elena, compared to ES6?<p>* For bonus points: What is interesting in Elena, compared to Smalltalk?<p>Without answering this questions, I don&#x27;t see why I should take a look. And there must be some differences, e.g. around the concept of first-class messages, which apparently are related to Smalltalk.

Is there anyone that doesn’t immediately scroll past the elevator pitch to the code examples when looking at a new language?

It seems the language (at least in implementation) is closely coupled with Visual Studio and Windows?

Can anyone describe a use-case for &quot;first class messages&quot;?

&gt; ELENA supports rich set of object-oriented features:<p>&gt; abstract classes, interfaces, singletons, class constants,<p>&gt; named constructors, variadic methods &#x2F; constructors and<p>&gt; class extensions.<p>Half of these are anti patterns that I appreciate other languages (Go, Rust) leave out (non-virtual inheritance, singletons, ...). Elena announcing them as features makes me wary.

Front page doesn&#x27;t say whether it has obligate GC, which nowadays I guess means yes.

From a quick read-through of the docs, I really love that the language is providing a fresh take on things without the super-junior promise of trying to “solve everything”. I’m impressed and will take a closer look.

&quot;A variable name can contain any UTF-8 symbols (except special ones, white-spaces; the leading character cannot be a digit) and is case-sensitive.&quot;<p>This is terrible.

From a PL design perspective, I&#x27;m interested in finding out what new ideas it introduces to an already crowded field?<p>Rust is good example of a PL design that introduces new concepts (around ownership.)<p>Pony is another good example of PL design, for the same reason as Rust, but it differs in important ways by introducing Reference Capabilities. I tried to get some attention to it the other day: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24201754" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24201754</a><p>What new ideas does Elena introduce?

TLDR; &gt;Supported platforms<p>&gt;<p>&gt; Windows<p>&gt; Linux<p>Sorry guys, not for me ...

New languages would better be written on the JVM or at least on the coreclr, otherwise they loose all hopes of seamless interoperability with existing production ready ecosystems and therefore loose most hope of success.