Enter F# (pronounced "F-sharp"), a Microsoft language designed to be both functional and practical. Because F# is a first-class language on the .Net Common Language Runtime (CLR), it can access all of the same libraries and features as other CLR languages, such as C# and Visual Basic.
F# code resembles OCaml somewhat, but it adds interesting syntax of its own. For example, numeric data types in F# can be assigned units of measure to aid scientific computation. F# also offers constructs to aid asynchronous I/O, CPU parallelization, and off-loading processing to the GPU.
After a long gestation period at Microsoft Research, F# now ships with Visual Studio 2010. Better still, in an unusual move, Microsoft has made the F# compiler and core library available under the Apache open source license; you can start working with it for free and even use it on Mac and Linux systems (via the Mono runtime).
Experimental programming language No. 5: Opa
Web development is too complicated. Even the simplest Web app requires countless lines of code in multiple languages: HTML and JavaScript on the client, Java or PHP on the server, SQL in the database, and so on.
Opa doesn't replace any of these languages individually. Rather, it seeks to eliminate them all at once, by proposing an entirely new paradigm for Web programming. In an Opa application, the client-side UI, server-side logic, and database I/O are all implemented in a single language, Opa.
Opa accomplishes this through a combination of client- and server-side frameworks. The Opa compiler decides whether a given routine should run on the client, server, or both, and it outputs code accordingly. For client-side routines, it translates Opa into the appropriate JavaScript code, including AJAX calls.
Naturally, a system this integrated requires some back-end magic. Opa's runtime environment bundles its own Web server and database management system, which can't be replaced with stand-alone alternatives. That may be a small price to pay, however, for the ability to prototype sophisticated, data-driven Web applications in just a few dozen lines of code. Opa is open source and available now for 64-bit Linux and Mac OS X platforms, with further ports in the works.
Experimental programming language No. 6: Fantom
Should you develop your applications for Java or .Net? If you code in Fantom, you can take your pick and even switch platforms midstream. That's because Fantom is designed from the ground up for cross-platform portability. The Fantom project includes not just a compiler that can output bytecode for either the JVM or the .Net CLI, but also a set of APIs that abstract away the Java and .Net APIs, creating an additional portability layer.
There are plans to extend Fantom's portability even further. A Fantom-to-JavaScript compiler is already available, and future targets might include the LLVM compiler project, the Parrot VM, and Objective-C for iOS.
But portability is not Fantom's sole raison d'être. While it remains inherently C-like, it is also meant to improve on the languages that inspired it. It tries to strike a middle ground in some of the more contentious syntax debates, such as strong versus dynamic typing, or interfaces versus classes. It adds easy syntax for declaring data structures and serializing objects. And it includes support for functional programming and concurrency built into the language.
