I generally agree with the 4 tier categorization:

    1. C/C++/Rust
    2. Java/Go/OCaml
    3. MyPy, TypeScript
    4. Python, JavaScript

But I'd also add 2 or 3 more tiers:

    5. String-ish languages without GC - Shell, Awk, Make, CMake  [1]
    6. Configuration Languages - YAML / TOML - declaring data structures [2]
    7. Data Notations - JSON, HTML, CSV - Objects, Documents, Tables [3]

The goal of YSH is actually to *unify tiers 4, 5, 6, and 7* under one language. The slogan I've been using is "minimal YSH is shell+Python+JSON+YAML"

Instead of having Unix sludge (autotools - m4 generating make) and Cloud sludge (Helm - Go templates generating YAML), you have one language

    - YSH is the code dialect -- it is a shell with real data types like Python
      - and with reflection like Ruby/Python, not generating text

    - Hay (Hay Ain't YAML) is the data dialect
      - and we have built-in JSON, etc.

This is a hard design challenge, but I just made a release with an overhaul of Hay - https://oils.pub/release/0.28.0/

Hay version 1 was hard-coded in the interpreter - https://oils.pub/release/0.28.0/doc/hay.html

But we realized it's actually better to self-host it in YSH, using YSH reflection. We will be testing this by rewriting Hay in YSH

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So that's our language design response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43386115

> It's madness that languages are effectively siloed from each other.

Instead of tiers 4, 5, 6 being silo'd, we have them all under YSH and the Oils runtime (which is tiny, 2.3 MB of pure native code).

(As a bonus, OSH also runs on the Oils runtime, and it's the most bash-compatible shell!)

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[1] Garbage Collection Makes YSH Different - https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2024/09/gc.html

Shell, Awk, and Make Should Be Combined - https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2016/11/13.html - all these languages lack GC!

[2] Survey of Config Languages - https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Survey-of-Config-... - divides this category into 5 tiers:

    1. Languages for String Data
    2. Languages for Typed Data
    3. Programmable String-ish Languages
    4. Programmable Typed Data
    5. Internal DSLs in General Purpose Languages

[3] Zest: Notation and Representation addresses this - https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/writing/notation-and-repr...

YSH also has a common subset with J8 Notation (which is a superset of JSON)

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