Microsoft has launched a new open-source project to develop the Bosque programming language. The purpose of the Bosque language project is to build a functional programming language that avoids “accidental complexity” in the development process.

Design goals for the Bosque language include improved developer productivity, better software quality, and enablement of a range of new compilers and tool experiences. The new language is positioned as an experiment in regularized design for a machine-assisted, rapid, and reliable software development lifecycle.

A key goal is elimination of accidental complexity. Bosque code is supposed to be simple and easy to comprehend for both machines and humans. But Bosque remains very much in development at this point; proponents do not recommend using Bosque for any production work. Developers are encouraged to experiment with it.

Some features and design choices made for Bosque include the following:

Bosque becomes the latest language project at Microsoft, which has produced languages including C#, an object-oriented language; F#, a functional language; and TypeScript, a typed superset of JavaScript. The software giant has had a good degree of success in developing languages that gain popularity. C#, for example, ranked fifth and TypeScript 12th in the most recent RedMonk language rankings, which are based on discussions in Stack Overflow and code usage in GitHub. 

You can find Bosque documentation, examples, and a reference implementation on GitHub. Tutorials are in the works. 

This story, "Microsoft aims for simplicity with Bosque programming language" was originally published by InfoWorld.