Aren't the basic programming concepts understood and defined now? All a new language can really bring to the table is a different syntax.
I absolutely don't agree with that. Let me take an example from the area I work in and know a bit about: web development.
Web development today is still extremely messy, with often a bundle of technologies (server-side language, client-side language, web framework, database) thrown in together and the developer having to deal with their different models and concepts.
The company where I worked developed Opa (http://opalang.org) a single language for writing web apps. It unifies server-and-client coding in one coherent language that is translated to native code on the server and to JS on the client and the compiler handles all the communication between them. It has strong typing, which is also heavily used for security (essentially to prevent all sorts of injection attacks). Persistence (database) is also cleanly integrated.
Just different syntax? I don't think so...
(yes, of course there are competing similar approaches like node.js or, lesser known, Ur/web, but they are all cutting-edge and innovative and not just more of the same old).
As someone who has downloaded this some time back and messed with it a bit, I do have to say it's kind of slick.
Glad to hear that
I had a few complaints about it early on, but it's evolving, though. Might be worth revisiting.
You should absolutely do that. We've come a long way since the beginning. And we're not done yet!
You can't call it an ORM solution if the backend isn't a relational database. [...]
There's a reason why ORM in the title is between quotes
Just for the record: we (i.e. creators of Opa) don't claim we (re) invented the wheel. But we do think that what we provide is quite cool. And what that is?
What's not to love?
Curious? Sounds too good to be true? Check out Opa's homepage or my blog for more info.
Disclaimer: I am working on Opa at MLstate."
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?