JVM – languages … what a hype!

After Groovy and later Scala tried to get the attention of the ordinary Java developer by arguing that they are not too different to what he is already used to, this argument now has become the must-have of new JVM languages, what results in some really weird statements.

Some minutes ago I got notice of the new programming language Fan, which web site has a funny start page:

It shows first the code example:

// find files less than one day old
files := dir.list.findAll |File f->Bool|
{
  return DateTime.now - f.modified < 1day
}

// print the filenames to stdout
files.each |File f|
{
  echo("$f.modified.toLocale:  $f.name")
}

and then states:

Familiar Syntax
Java and C# programmers will feel at home with Fan’s curly brace syntax.

Yep! Indeed!

It has curly braces, so it feels SOOOO familiar!!  I would really feel desoriented if it would use do…end instead. But with this {…}  it will be very easily adoptable by all my Java colleagues.

ARGH. Does anyone beside me feel that assignment with := , lack of semicolons, use of code blocks, pipes as parameter list separators, String templates and ‘echo’ for printing on screen is IN NO WAY FAMILIAR for Java programmers ???

It does indeed feel very familiar to me, but not due to the curly braces, but because of my knowledge of Ruby, Pascal and Unix Shell.  Taken that languages, every mentioned aspect seems covered. So what stays as being typical Java?  Nothing!

Fine introduction, Fans.