A TorqueScript standard library

I've been thinking for a while that I don't like TorqueScript very much. The language itself is an issue (being, for all practical purposes, untyped), but I've realised that it's also due to the clunky support for stuff that should be simple. For example, when I need to treat a string as a vector, I have to go through the getWord/setWord functions to read or modify it.

I think we can do better. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with Bret Victor; he's an inspiration of mine right now, mostly for his article Learnable Programming, which argues for better language design. It's not just applicable to lnguages that are 'kid languages' or supposed to be used as an intro to programming. All languages can benefit from being more accessible. Imagine the first time you read someone else's code - an opaque language can make it a nightmare to understand, even if you're an expert. Code isn't for compilers any more, it's for humans.

So anyway, with me off my soapbox, I'd like to talk about improving TS's libraries to make up for its lack of typefulness. Particularly, I've been thinking about maths. We often have vectors in TS, and as I said before, need to use getWord and stuff to access them. I've been dreaming of another way:

// Create a new vector (10, 20, 30)
%myVec = vec.new(10, 20, 30);

// Print the x component
%x = vec.x(%myVec);
echo(%x);

// Update the z component
%myVec = vec.z(%myVec, -5);

// Cross two vectors
%c = vec.cross(%myVec, %yourVec);

Of course, this is mostly syntax sugar for functions that already exist. I'd like to point out the overloading of the .xyz functions to be both getters and setters.

The idea is to abstract all vector operations into the vec namespace, so that we can stop thinking of vectors as strings. It shouldn't matter how the vectors are internally represented; as a programmer I shouldn't have to think about that.

This becomes more powerful when you start applying this to stuff like lists or other data structures. Imagine being able to write

%myList = list.new();
%myList = list.push(%myList, "Bill");
%myList = list.push(%myList, "Janine");
echo(list.length(%myList));

By abstracting the fact that the list is a string, we can do things like represent the list internally as "2 Bill Janine", which gives instant access to the list's length. As long as all the list.x functions expect this format, the user never has to see it. And by using functions that are named what they do (i.e., list.length instead of getWordCount), your intent while writing code becomes easier to understand.

The repetition of %myList = list.something(%myList) is frustrating. Oddly enough, it's very functional, which could be good, but TS doesn't have the syntax to support that without getting parentheses everywhere. For example, see Haskell's $ operator which turns 'print (show (head (namesOf myFriends)))' into 'print $ show $ head $ namesOf myFriends'.

Okay, so, congrats for reading this far. Sorry it's a bit incoherent, but I'm basically wondering who thinks this is a good idea. Better libraries for TS with more expressive naming.