I'm going to join the choir saying that languages need a concise description of what makes them special easily accessible — but while syntax is important, with a language like Pony (where the cool stuff is in the semantics), the cool semantics should be upfront.

It seems, from some skimming of the first like 10 pages of the guide, that Pony is an object-oriented language with actors, and a built-in concept of mutability of references. What kind of references are there? You say that deadlock is impossible; how — do you have session types or something? You say that nulls don't exist; how — do you have linear typing? How do you express capabilities?

Essentially, give me a one-page overview of the static and dynamic semantics (i.e. type system and runtime semantics) that gives me all I need to know about this language to decide whether I want to learn more about it.

The language looks cool, but all documentation I've seen so far seems to assume that the reader doesn't even know what static typing is. To get knowledgeable people interested, I think it's useful to have a pitch that appeals to people who are already familiar with a bunch of languages.

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ameliaquining 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I agree with you, but also, it is legitimately hard to explain concisely the unique aspects of Pony's semantics. My short attempt at it from a couple years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33980738

	▲	tomsmeding 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you! This is quite illuminating. It's not enough for me to know precisely how the language works or how it feels to program in it, but it allows me to put the language in a box so that I know what concepts it introduces and what problems it tries to fix. :)

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bccdee 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What I haven't seen anyone mention yet is that syntax exists to concisely express semantics. If you want to give me an immediate feel for your interesting semantics, show me how you express them syntactically.

It may be easier to explain (for instance) Rust's borrow-checker in prose, but if you show me a snippet of code using `&mut`, it'll click for me intuitively that something conceptual and important is happening here. That's why I want an illustrative example at the top of the front page.

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TOGoS 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't have a one-page overview of Pony, but I did listen to https://corecursive.com/055-unproven-with-sean-allen/ in the car a couple of times and that made me want to try it.