a programming language for perverts
Three goals of Goblin:
- disguise a functional language as an object-oriented one
- create a syntax that bothers people as much as Lisp without making something bad-on-purpose
Smalltalk-style method syntax, where method name & parameters are combined into a single "selector". Operators are limited to left-associative binary operators with a single level of precedence, but are user-configurable. Most control flow done with blocks, like Ruby / Smalltalk, rather than keyword statements.
General purpose data structure, which can be used as tuples, records, enums, and functions
var bindings and parameters allow you to write in an imperative style while using immutable data. Similar to Swift's copy-on-write data structures & inout parameters
provide and use provide language-level support for app context, dependency injection, singletons, feature flags & OS-level resources, and allow for the elimination of globals, static variables, and "ambient authority"