Creator of JSON Unveils New Programming Language 'Misty'

He specified the JSON notation, and developed tools like JSLint and the minifier JSMin. His Wikipedia entry says he was also a senior JavaScript architect at PayPal - but he's probably better known for writing O'Reilly's book JavaScript: the Good Parts. But Doug Crockford has a new challenge. O'Reilly's monthly tech newsletter says Crockford "has created a new programming language called Misty. It is designed to be used both by students and professional programmers." The language's official site calls it "a dynamic, general-purpose, transitional, actor language. It has a gentle syntax that is intended to benefit students, as well as advanced features such as capability security and lambdas with lexical scoping..." The language is quite strict in its use of spaces and indentation. In most programming languages, code spacing and formatting are underspecified, which leads to many incompatible conventions of style, some promoting bug formation, and all promoting time-wasting arguments, incompatibilities, and hurt feelings. Misty instead allows only one convention which is strictly enforced. This liberates programmers to focus their attention on more important matters. Indentation is in increments of 4 spaces. The McKeeman Form is extended by three special rules to make this possible: indentation The spaces required by the current nesting. increase_indentation Append four spaces to the indentation. decrease_indentation Remove four spaces from the indentation. The indentation is the number of spaces required at the beginning of a line as determined by its nesting level. indent increase_indentation linebreak outdent decrease_indentation linebreak The linebreak rule allows the insertion of a comment, ends the line, and checks the indentation of the next line. Multiple comments and blank lines may appear wherever a line can end.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.