Esterel found its niche in control intensive real-time applications and evolves as a standard, with several implementations.
Unlike all early and also recent synchronous languages, Esterel is the only one to provide an imperative style of programming. This is kind of surprising for me considering the high popularity of imperative languages.
Why there's no attempts to create new languages based on the Esterel foundations?
I cannot argue about functional vs imperative style of programming, but I do feel more comfortable with the latter (most people do), and they will be around for the next years.
I like the Lua approach, which seems to favor imperative style but concisely support most functional features without bloat.
The example below, written in Esterel, implements the basic training for an athlete:
module Runner:
input Second, Morning, Step, Meter, Lap;
output ...; % not used
every Morning do
abort
loop
abort RunSlowly when 15 Second;
abort
every Step do
Jump || Breathe
end every
when 100 Meter;
FullSpeed
each Lap
when 2 Lap
end every
end module
This imperative style is almost a software specification given as a recipe in natural English.The communication in Esterel is made through broadcast input and output signals.
The synchronous preemption structures (every do, loop each, abort when, etc) are the heart of the language.
LuaGravity provides constructs based on them, which I consider even more useful than the functional facilities.
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