A language developed by Sun and the mastermind of Java and Scheme, Guy L. Steele, Jr. And this is a very interesting language indeed. Developed for the High Productivity Computing Project (HPCP), although Sun was kicked out in lately. However, it seems like Sun intends to keep the language alive.
The most crazy (in a good way) aspect of Fortress, to me at least, is that it attempts to emulate mathematics. Using an (un?)healthy dose of syntatic sugar. The standard stuff like operator overloading and glorified loops (i.e. foreach) are a given. If possible, it can also use Unicode to do things like SIGMA [k=1:50], or annotate units (kilogram, gram, etc.) to values.
Well, at least is supposed to. It’s still to early (since it’s not even fully born yet) if it can actually deliver all of this, and it’s still too early to determine this large dose of syntatic sugar is medicine or poison, but it definitely is an interesting language.
PS: Medicine or poison: 약이냐 독이냐. A Korean term for something that is unknown whether it’s good or bad. Comes from the fact that too much medicine can poison you.