[camccann]

While it would be nice to imagine something like this catching on, somehow I suspect that any language whose reference manual gives a specification of semantics using sequent calculus before discussing the standard libraries is unlikely to gain much use.

Fast, expressive, flexible, with static analysis that can prevent entire classes of common bugs? That sounds great! Oh wait, no, it uses words that sound like math, obviously that makes it unsuitable for the real world. Sigh.

[chipsy]

I find that the deal-breaker for most languages is just a case of missing "production gloss." Things like seamless installations, breadth of packages, language interoperability, platform compatibility, documented quirks.

Take, for example, Ur vs. Python. Python has a plentitude of frameworks, template libraries, protocol implementations, dev tools, packaging and deployment mechanisms. Ur has just started, thus it has little to offer in any one of these categories. The raw language advantages of safety can't be justified in a commercial environment where speed of deployment is mostly contingent on having the ecosystem there - if you plow ahead without having them in place, you're going to tack on weeks or months building and refining new implementations of those things.

Fortunately, it's entirely possible for language designers to bootstrap the entire ecosystem. It just takes a long time and lots of dedication to do so. The author indicates that he is eager to make this language worthy in these ways, so I'm wishing him the best. :)