I'm considering making a declarative programming language where you make programs in three steps: 1. basically describe encoding formats for the data, where passing data in that format automagically gets converted to a deserialized/parsed object, and where the reverse operation is also possible, e.g. model RSAPemPublicKey{ property n:mpz_t; property e:mpz_t; format{ "-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----", base64{ASN.1-DER{_,\@n,\@e}}, "-----END PUBLIC KEY-----" } } 2. define inputs and outputs as declared models/formats. 3. assign inputs and outputs to file paths (taking advantage of everything-is-a-file to make that essentially universal, e.g. stdin is just /fd/1.) On runtime the program will read inputs to file, process them to assigned models, map extracted parameters to output models, encode those, then write to outputs. Sprinkle in some logic to make looping/continouos execution possible, and you've got yourself an extremely powerful programming language.