I built Beads initially in Adobe AIR the same way Shockscript was built. But we have an entirely different approach towards syntax. My system is not so much about computation as bundling several DSLs into one consistent overall language wrapper, so i have a graph database schema language, a literal data syntax, a layout syntax, a drawing syntax, event tracking, regular expression, etc., all the commonly needed tasks have their own miniature language. It ends up around the same size as Swift, but then you don’t have to learn 1000 API’s. Because only 20 library routines are typically used with any frequency.
i am proud to announce that my Beads language compiler can now generate actual usable websites that stretch like rubber and can run on mobile to tablet to desktop with a single source file, and also switch languages on demand. Language switching is pretty ugly in native HTML, so this is a very nice feature.
the source code is on github at https://github.com/magicmouse/beads-examples/tree/master/Example%20-%20Beads%20website
You can see it run at www.beadslang.com, as i used it for my own website. The language switching buttons are in the upper right corner.
It generates a single HTML file, of 62kb in this case, and during compilation checks for all art assets present so that you can catch resource typos. Most languages don’t catch missing art errors, yet it is a very common error when you have thousands of pieces of art included in a site or product.
It has a static runtime of about 500kb (uncompressed). One of my goals is to make it possible for a single notation to run on the computers of the day. It is very bizarre that we have in industry an almost completely separate talent pool for making websites vs. mobile apps vs. desktop. The only significant difference is layout precision and screen size. On mobile you need pixel control because things are very cramped.
For those people who want to ditch CSS, JS, and HTML and work in a higher level language, please give the example a spin, and look at the source code. It is designed to adapt to a wide range of devices, and this is the kind of machine independent programming i am striving to facilitate.
I look forward to your comments. This is a very experienced group of professionals, and i look forward to seeing any comments. It has taken many years to design this, and thousands of hours to build it, so please let me know what you think.