Io (www.iolanguage.com) is a new programming language that's purely
object-oriented (but with prototypes), has a powerful concurrency
mechanism via actors, and uses an extremely flexible syntax because
all code is a modifiable message tree. Like Python, it is dynamically
typed, has a very clean syntax, produces short code, and is
excruciatingly slow (on the same level as eachother). Io has a unique
syntax combining Lisp's idea of functions for flow control with
traditional function syntax and smalltalk-like syntax to get slots of
objects. Io has no keywords and everything, even multiple lines of
code, can be used as an expression. Even as a beginner to Io, I was
able to write something in just 43 lines to let you do something like
this (and more) in Io:
each((key, value) in map(x=1, y=2, z=3),
write(key, ": ", value, "\n")
)
Neither the each function nor the map function were built in (Io has
other mechanisms for that kind of thing, but they are less efficient).
Can anyone show me how to so much as alias "for" to "each" in Python
or allow block syntax at all without hacking the C source code?
Io doesn't use __methods_with_ this_annoying_s yntax__ because nothing
is supposed to be for internal use only and there are only about three
functions that would cause a problem if overridden.
For embedding, Io doesn't have to use Py_ALL_CAPS, instead it just
uses IoCamelCase, which looks much better. Interfaces to C are much
more object oriented.
Many users of Io (myself included) have switched over from Python for
these reasons.
I guess there are still the obvious advantages of Python over Io,
including
*large community
*more bindings to stuff
*strict coding conventions
*inflexible so everything is the same
*no need to close blocks
But unless there are other problems, the first two go away soon
(considering that Io was first created just two years ago). The last
three are somewhat trivial and may even be to Io's advantage.
Daniel Ehrenberg
