Patrick,

Unless I try to lock into Stanza and need some help, any further email in this period of mine can be considered noise. But new project forums can need some noise to show that the project is active, and is being supported. The landscape of new programming languages, discovered by means of Google, is a landscape of dead carcasses, many having been left to die in a reasonably mature state.

People who don't know much can still be looking for very specific features, so if I think I need something, others may also be looking for it.

I do actually have two questions.

Q1) I got as far as running 'stanza install -platform windows -path', which produced the '.stanza' file. I got a line in the file like this:

  install-dir = "E:\\E_1\\02-p\\3zz\\(stanza)\\00_wstanza_0_11_10"

Can I change that to a relative path? I'll find out, but even if I can, there's the question "Am I supposed to be able to change that to a relative path?".

My distribution needs to be portable. I zip up my working folder, which contains multiple 3rd-party distributions. People would then simply unzip my file on a Windows machine, in any folder, with spaces allowed in the path. My binaries would then just work. No magic installs. No lengthy "do this and that". Simplicity counts for a lot.

There are some distributions that allow for that simplicity, like Dart, Node.js, and certain MinGW-w64 distributions, but many that don't, recent ones being Kotlin, and the MinGW-w64 distributed with Idris. It's a sad day when I work hard to make sure spaces can be used in paths, but the pros don't.

Q2) Is there a "chaining substitute" operator? Instead of 'f(x)', I'd like something like the usual 'x |> f'.

*Noise: concerning multimethods*

You can thank Julia for warming me up on how to make the switch from object methods to multimethods. Central to all my types are enforcing a domain, using a domain predicate. For example, like in many languages, it appears you only give me 'Int', rather than a large selection of signed and unsigned ints, arbitrary-size and fixed-sized integers. So I would 'Int' in a struct (call it 'Nat'), and use the domain predicate 'x >= 0', which a multimethod would retrieve.

The predicate 'x >=0' would be hard coded for 'Nat', so I assume a multimethod would work for that, and be desirable for that.

However, I  'Nat' would be extended to take a "domain restriction predicate argument", predicates like "x > 24 && x < 42".

*Noise: concerning innovative products and the-future-mathematical-programming-language-of-the-masses*

Innovative products will be used in ways the developers never dreamed of.

Suppose the world's use of languages converges to one programming language, "the mathematical programming language of the masses". What might that programming will be like? Most likely, our imagination, at this point, would get it wrong.

I guess at one point, I thought Haskell had to be the-future-mathematical-programming-language-of-the-masses, but I don't see the masses jumping on the Haskell band wagon, and now I don't even want to use it. Why? I don't explain, for the purpose of noise reduction. As a member-of-the-masses, I know Haskell is great, but I don't want to use it.

*Noise: trying to solve the problem of bridging the mathematical-lanuage gap*

There's ZFC-based math, and then there are programming languages.

It's a free-for-all, so I'm interested in trying to solve the problem of unifying the languages of two different disciplines, math and computer science, where, currently, people mostly work very different.

I don't want to define an algebraic group twice, once using a combination of English and standard notation, and then again using the syntax of a programming language. I want to do it once, in one language, a technical language that gets processed by a computer, for various reasons, and that can be reasonably read like normal. It doesn't have to be perfect, just acceptable.

*Noise: you have an arrow type, chalk one up for Stanza*

Successful people don't waste their time, so I consider all programming languages to be great, for someone, and indirectly, maybe even for me. I try not to get stupid about criticizing languages.

I'm not current on Julia, but it didn't have an arrow type. Dart also doesn't have an arrow type. You have an arrow type. That counts for a lot, I'm pretty sure.

Julia's abstract type only allowed for subtyping one type. You allow subtyping of an intersection type. I guess that will give me a form of multiple inheritance. I need that, because an algebraic group is both an additive group and a multiplicative group.

*End noise*

In the end, no feature of a programming language magically makes things easy for me. Readable syntax is desirable, but not absolutely essential, because it's not like, "Dude, it's almost like reading English. I instantly understand it all, even though it's massively complex!"

I might have some questions, since I don't know much. If you didn't already have the good amount of documentation you have, I wouldn't have made the noise I've made. Chalk one up for Stanza.

Still, regardless of any feature, common sense tells me not to jump on the bandwagon of any language that hasn't established itself, and isn't backed by big funding of some kind.

But then, I repeatedly get to a point with other language where I say, "Dude, nobody who would want to read through an abstract algebra book will want to wade through this stuff of yours". Not that I've ever gotten to the point of implementing much "stuff". It's all risky, and there's no purpose in developing a library that ends up on the landscape of dead carcass.

Regards,
GB