Fantom (programming language)
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| Paradigm | multi-paradigm |
|---|---|
| Developer | Brian Frank, Andy Frank |
| First appeared | 2005 |
| Stable release |
1.0.68 / April 7, 2016
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| Typing discipline | static, dynamic |
| License | Academic Free License version 3.0 |
| Website | www |
| Influenced by | |
| C#, Java, Scala, Ruby, Erlang | |
Fantom is a general purpose object-oriented programming language created by Brian and Andy Frank that runs on the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), JavaScript, and the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) (.NET support is considered "prototype" status). Its primary design goal is to provide a standard library API that abstracts away the question of whether the code will ultimately run on the JRE or CLR. Like C# and Java, Fantom uses a curly brace syntax. The language supports functional programming through closures and concurrency through the Actor model. Fantom takes a "middle of the road" approach to its type system, blending together aspects of both static and dynamic typing.
Fantom's type system is simple by design. All variables are statically typed, as they are in C# and Java. Fantom rejects generic types due to their complexity, but it does have a set of built-in generic types: List, Map, and Func. Fantom can also take on the feel of a dynamically typed language through dynamic calls and automatic downcasting. Fantom has an easy to use reflection API and metaprogramming capabilities.
Fantom is open source under the Academic Free License 3.0 and is available for Windows and Unix-like platforms (including Mac OS X).
In Fantom, the unit of deployment is called a pod. Pods take on the role of namespaces, packages, and modules. They are stored as .pod files, which are zip files containing the FCode (the Fantom bytecode), the documentation, and resource files necessary to run the pod. A pod can define any number of types for use in other libraries and applications. A pod name fully qualifies a type name. For example, fwt::Widget is distinct from webapp::Widget. If a pod contains a type named Main, then it can be executed on the command line with: fan <podName>
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