Lambda the Ultimate

The paper Haskell-Like S-Expression-Based Language Designed for an IDE appeals to me at the moment because I actually like the regularity of s-exprs (to side-step the inevitable technopsychobabble corners people paint themselves into otherwise) but still really want static type checking (with some inference, probably).

The intro is great and I won't spoil it, here's what is just after the opening jab.

This report documents the results of designing a modern programming language with its IDE in mind. We introduce a new statically typed functional language with strong metaprogramming capabilities, targeting JavaScript, the most popular runtime of today; and its accompanying browser-based IDE. We demonstrate the advantages resulting from designing both the language and its IDE at the same time and evaluate the resulting environment by employing it to solve a variety of nontrivial programming tasks. Our results demonstrate that programmers can greatly benefit from the combined application of modern approaches to programming tools.

Plus, any paper that mentions Shen and Elm and Flow et. al. can't be all bad.

P.S. I think this video is very nice, too.

(some extra keywords: xixixao, Shem, Golem)