Intro
Boo is a .NET language I have recently been looking at and having a mess-around with it’s a very cool language that is based on python syntax, I have never looked at python before so I’m not in a position to compare the two.
Why use it?
Your probably thinking yeah another .NET language so what we have C# why bother with this one, I kind of felt this way before I looked into it, but now I see the potential this language has, some reasons why:
- Duck typing – Boo is statically typed however it is clever enough to infer types so you end up with shorter syntax with less duplication
- Open Compiler – This is the biggest thing going for Boo, you can change the workings of the compiler to your own needs giving you the power to create DSL’s
- Built-in literals – declaring a regex like this /\d+/ and an array like this x=(1,2) is very cool
- Extensibility points – Either by macros or meta methods you can add/edit the syntax for the compiler to use, this leads to reduced boilerplate code
- Plus much more you can check out at the Boo homepage…
I would really suggest having a look and to try it out, at the moment I’m using it with SharpDevelop as at the moment it doesn’t run as well in vs2008 with BooLangStudio.
Related Links
