This will be an interpreted language with strong but implicit data typing. To illustrate the use of such a system, let me jump ahead a bit and consider a concrete problem. Line 2 is a loop over this list. In line 4 we loop over all of the papers cited in each hit, and in line 5 we loop over each author for each paper. In lines 11 to 13, the top ten authors are printed out.
Interpreted languages offer immediate execution and very rapid user feddback.
This facilitate efficient debugging and data exploration. The command language operates at user speed so computational efficiency is really not an issue. Persistent objects allow a user to work on a problem for a period of time, stop, do something else, and return to where they had been working previously. Persistent objects avoid the need to run through the complete history of command operations just to get back to where you were previously. The power of the system envisioned here is derived from the fact that objects retain internal structure.