Bram Moolenaar

Zimbu, an experimental programming language

Programming languages evolve over time. C became ANSI C and somehow resulted in the C++ monster. Java developed slowly but steadily and is now at its sixth incarnation. When writing lots of programs in a language some parts turn out to be a bad choice. Because of backwards compatibility they are not dropped but carried over eternally and make the language unnecessary hard to use. Every programmer has his list favorite features, but usually there is no language that covers all of them.

Zimbu takes the good ideas of existing languages, drops the bad parts and adds a few brand new ideas. The goal is to make a language that builds upon all the learnings from working with existing languages. And to have fun creating something new.

This talk will discuss the main choices made while developing Zimbu. Going over alternatives, illustrated with many examples, you will get insight into what is good and bad about existing languages. And have a discussion about the choices made for Zimbu. This is still under development. The intention is to write Zimbu programs for a while and reconsider choices where needed. It will be a few years before version 1.0 is ready.

About Bram Moolenaar

Bram Moolenaar (www.moolenaar.net) is well known for his work on Vim, a text editor that is available for almost every system. After studying electronics and working for Océ, a company that makes high volume copying machines, he decided that creating open source software was more useful and fun. But this doesn't provide much income and he ended up working for Google, one of the few companies that embraces open source software. In between he worked in Uganda and is still helping poor children there through the ICCF foundation (www.iccf.nl).

Time and Location

Saturday, October 17th at 1:30 PM in 1320 DCL