Move.js

The project's GitHub repo[1] does a much better effort of selling it:<p><i>When compared to JavaScript, Move has the following key features:<p>- Simpler. E.g. there's only one way to declare functions, no need for var declarations, only a single type of equality operators and no need for terminating statements with semicolons.<p>- Less boiler-plate code needed. Move introduces a few carefully selected features like the "import" and "export" keywords, and @-shorthand for this access.<p>- Move runs in any &#62;=ES3 JavaScript runtime and thus can be used as a universal programming language for everything from running in web browsers to powering complex offline systems.</i><p>Also, interestingly, it's from the guy behind Kod and Spotify's design.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/rsms/move" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/rsms/move</a>

For a "my first programming language", it's a bit too "programming language". It took me a few seconds to understand what<p><pre><code> hello = ^{ "Hello " + name } </code></pre> does. I (and my grandmother as well, for that matter) would understand that a lot better if it was a lot more explicit, like<p><pre><code> function hello(name) do "Hello " + name</code></pre>

For a language that's targeted at non-programmers I don't see how Move offers any benefits over Coffeescript, or even Javascript itself particularly.<p>Programming should change the way you think. The language is an artifact that you program <i>through</i>, but that's not the critical problem in conceiving of and executing good software design.<p>A cursory examination of the Move site does not make it look more attractive than other Javascript based languages, and the explanations it offers i don't think would make it more accessible to non-programmers either.<p>What gives? <i>/me is confused.</i>

So the differences between this and Javascript that I can see are:<p><pre><code> * ^ replacing function * default values for arguments, ^(x: 4){...} * print instead of console.log * array slicing x[1:3], x[:-2] * embedded HTML, div = &#60;div/&#62; </code></pre> Interesting, but this isn't convincing enough for me to use it.<p>Edit: like beaumartinez says, the Github page explains the differences much better than the site: <a href="https://github.com/rsms/move" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/rsms/move</a>

This seems to me to take up a similar space in javascript as velocity and freemarker do for Java. They attempt to make programming simpler for designers to work with and instead end up with a language that is too complicated for a designer and a completely new syntax for an engineer. Now, it takes more time for anyone to work with it.<p>For example, no need for var declarations. Well, wait a minute, how do I as an engineer scope a variable then? In javascript, scope is determined by functions when using a var and is global otherwise. Are all variables global? Or are they just in a namespace? Or are they all scoped as if they had var in front? Things like this will trip me up all the time and I will always have to refer to documentation.<p>For designers, mostly they don't want to work with functions and variables anyway, how big of a benefit is it that they don't need a var and there is only one way to declare a function? Learning this language seems like it would take the same amount of overhead as learning identical features in javascript. Why not just learn a subset of javascript instead?

This is a nice idea but the execution is convoluted.<p>I think writing LOGO in the browser with something similar would be cool.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)</a><p><pre><code> FORWARD 100 LEFT 90 FORWARD 100 LEFT 90 ... </code></pre> is a better introduction to programming...

one would expect that such language would have fixed js objects, e.g. arrays not allowing wild things like<p><pre><code> a = []; a[10] = undefined; a["x"] = "foo"</code></pre>

print foo.makeHello capitalize name<p>The right associativity of function application is a very peculiar feature and it turns my Haskell brain upside down.

I just loved how it clearly told me its for beginners. <i>That means I can skip this one!</i> Yay!

Like a Ruby