This was especially confusing to me when I clicked on the "try" button and was dropped into a page with an empty text box. Most playgrounds I've seen before at least have a "hello world" there. There's a run button, but it's not particularly useful with an empty file!

Is it meant to do something? It doesn't follow the same cause/effect syntax as the tutorial, and plopping that welcome block into https://playground.nova-lang.net/ doesn't seem to do anything. I assume it's the note taking part of the syntax?

A caption for that sample, indicating it is one, would help.

This is an unrelated synonymous language. Besides this and submitted one, there're few others found online, one[0] being 20y+ old (first release 06/2003). There's also a research one on functional parallel programming[1], but no public implementation seems to exist. (Though conceptually Futhark is similar; maybe that Nova even influenced Futhark's creation.)

[0]: http://www.navgen.com/nova/index.html

[1]: https://research.nvidia.com/publication/2013-07_nova-functio...

I thought it was SNOBOL I was thinking of, but then I looked up the SNOBOL syntax and that wasn't it. Then I thought maybe REBOL but that wasn't it either. Following up from a comment below it was Eve that it seemed more similar to me (at least at first view).

And also replying to one more comment below. Modal on the developer June's website reminds me of Maude. If feel like term re-rewiting languages have a really cool idea in then that are just waiting to take off. Funny enough I think Maude also has a pattern matching system like Nova. although it's I believe an unordered bag of terms to match against instead of an ordered stack.

I wrote some SNOBOL IV programs back in the day and met Ralph Griswold when he visited the UCLA Computer Club. Fun language with very interesting ideas. Looking into Unicon is on my list of things to do.

I was thinking that this looks a lot like prolog or even make with rewrite terms

So that's why I found the username and language familiar. Was exploring this site few days ago. Besides this page, there's also one on Vera[0], what appears to be Nova's predecessor (at the end there's even link pointing to a defunct wiki under Nova's domain calling it Vera wiki).

[0]: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/vera.html

When you say "friendlier" does that also mean "less powerful"? Prolog's execution engine is very capable, so does Nova give up some of that power in exchange for friendliness or does it somehow retain it?

No LSP yet, but we do have a tree-sitter grammar