I've always liked Pascal and Modula-2 (never got round to trying Oberon). These programming languages are actually much simpler to learn than many recent languages, including supposedly "friendly" scripting languages that tend to have quite large and loose syntax.
Brian Kernighan wrote an influential essay "Why Pascal is not my favourite programming language" that strongly influenced the perception that Pascal was suitable only for teaching and not real production work.
The important point about languages with a small, finite (and clear) syntax is that you actually feel you could fully learn the language, maybe even master it. Your code may end up a little bit more verbose (anathema to many programmers, I know) but that doesn't mean it's unreadable.
I don't mind if a language is strict about the way it's syntax is written. I'm happy if it doesn't have shortcuts either (i.e. it has just one method to perform an operation or function). This, in my view, actually makes learning the language simpler and easier.
I've longed wished that there was a simple, strongly-typed compiled language with the lineage of Pascal available for modern server side web programming. Does anything like this exist?
Brian Kernighan wrote an influential essay "Why Pascal is not my favourite programming language" that strongly influenced the perception that Pascal was suitable only for teaching and not real production work.
The important point about languages with a small, finite (and clear) syntax is that you actually feel you could fully learn the language, maybe even master it. Your code may end up a little bit more verbose (anathema to many programmers, I know) but that doesn't mean it's unreadable.
I don't mind if a language is strict about the way it's syntax is written. I'm happy if it doesn't have shortcuts either (i.e. it has just one method to perform an operation or function). This, in my view, actually makes learning the language simpler and easier.
I've longed wished that there was a simple, strongly-typed compiled language with the lineage of Pascal available for modern server side web programming. Does anything like this exist?