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Positron Language Specification

Positron is a language in development, so its specification will constantly change.

Positron's Laws of Design

1. (Law of Simplicity) A Positron feature must help to make the language better and greater, without unnecessary additions, modifications or complications.

2. (Law of Standardization) A Positron feature must favor one good way of doing something over several equivalent ways of doing the same thing, except where it would conflict with the First Law.

3. (Law of Performance) A Positron feature may not harm performance with the purpose of doing something for the programmer that he is able to do by himself, except where it would conflict with the First and Second Laws.

Later, when our programmers had taken responsibility for software that affects whole planets and human civilizations, they added a fourth law, the Zeroth Law, to precede the others:

0. (Law of Clarity)
   A Positron feature must be obvious in what it does, as well how it's used, with little or no need for external references. When in doubt, keep it simple and don't repeat yourself.

Positron's Paradigm

1. Positron is an object-oriented language, built from its imperative characteristics. As much as we can, we'll try to follow the philosophy "everything is an object".

2. Positron is an imperative language. It implies that it is not, in its base, functional (what would bring features as monads, functors and monoids).

3. Positron have some functional features. It accept freely any functional features whenever they present better alternatives.