- Be usable by people without any prior programming knowledge, for simple tasks
- Be usable for advanced tasks by experienced programmers
- Integrate easily with Java classes
- Provide sufficient syntax and libraries to integrate with its environment
- Be clear and concise in its operation
- Be typesafe, such that both small and large applications can be made with it
- It should be efficient to run
ZenScript originated from MineTweaker where I needed a simple programming language that would allow users without programming knowledge to be able to execute simple commands by following the tutorials for it.
Originally MineTweaker had a simple one-line-at-a-time parsed scripting system, but it quickly became clear that it wasn't flexible enough, so a simple parsed language was created. This parsed language worked quite well but was very inefficient as each value was wrapped into its own object. As I wanted to expand the capabilities, this language was not very efficient.
Additionally, it wasn't type-safe. There were no type definitions. On one hand, this is handy, since I didn't want to bother people with types. Following the tutorial was easy and the code was short. However, this gives a problem for the more experienced user, wanting to go beyond the basic tutorials: what are these values I'm working with, which properties does it have and which methods are available no it? It's not clear.
As a balance, ZenScript allows mixed typed and typeless behavior. You don't need to define types anywhere - the compile will infer them where possible and exhibit typeless behavior when the type is effectively unknown. In nearly all the cases, the type is perfectly known and execution runs at native java speed. Since there are types, they can be documented and enforced.