AF-BedSheetWhy
Why Fantom?
I can not lie. I like Fantom.
Anyone who's spoken to me knows I'm even evangelical about it. Yes, as a programming language, I think it's that good! But why?
Yes, you can read the official tour and the offical "Why Fantom" in the docs as written by the creators. But here's where I'm gonna tell you why I like it, as a converted Java user.
It's Pragmatic
No. 1 reason - It's Pragmatic! Yes, that's a psudonym for boring!
Without a doubt, Fantom is a boring language. It is not esoteric, it does not let the user explore new programming paradigms in language extensions. It is dull. And that means I can put all my engergy and effort into writing exciting applications!
The API - It Just Works!
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4716503/best-way-to-read-a-text-file Java is long in the tooth (read old) and so is the API it's bundled with. It makes simple things hard. Example, Want to read a file in Java? You're messing around with BufferedReaders, FileReaders and InputStreams and that's before you've considered stream closing and system dependant character encoding!
Enter Fantom: File(`myFile.txt`).readAllStr BOOM! Job. Done.
Want it system independent? BOOM! Fantom is UTF-8 by default baby!
Lists in Java? Well, there's an entire Collections Framework for that. There are Collections, Sets, Lists and Maps, all sorted (or not) with a prolific number of implementations. Which do you use? Still not sure? Look to apache, they have their own collections framework too!
"But I just want a bag of stuff?" I hear you cry!
Enter Fantom: Choices are List or Map BOOM! Job. Done. No discussion. No brainer.
So much thought went into what people need for everyday use. In every corner of the main API are clasees brimming with useful methods. usefule being key. Apache commons gives you loads of methods
NPEs? Not here mate!
Null Pointers... sigh. Every Java developer has been plauged by the dreaded NullPointerException or NPE. Even the inventer, Tony Hoare has publically apologised for inveting them, citing it The Billion Dollar Mistake Java has classes and frameworks attempting to eradicate them - if you choose to use them. You can't even autobox safely without NPEs!
Enter Fantom: Int myInt BOOM! No nulls allowed! Want nulls? Int? myInt BOOM! We got those too!
What this means is, nulls are allowed, but you have code specifically for them. Everything is non-null by default. this doesn't eradicate NullErrs, but it goes a long way towards it!