As alluded above, the biggest problem with the constructor syntax in languages that borrow from C++ is that in the common case of a class with just one constructor, the parameters of that constructor aren't available in the body of the class, leading to awful code like the following:

    class Point {
        public float x;
        public float y;
        public Point(float x, float y) {
            this.x = x;
            this.y = y;
        }
        public String toString() {
            return "(" + x + ", " + y + ")";
        }
    }

This hurts. Fortunately, we've already made that pain go away in Ceylon.

Well that seems like a laudable goal. Let's take a look at the example code, then, to see what the alternative is:

    class Color {

        shared Integer rgba;

        //default constructor
        shared new (Integer rgba) {
            assert (0 <= rgba <= #FFFFFFFF);
            this.rgba = rgba;
        }

        ...

        string => "Color { \ 
                   alpha=``hex(alpha)``, \ 
                   red=``hex(red)``, \ 
                   green=``hex(green)``, \ 
                   blue=``hex(blue)`` }";

    }

Maybe it's just me but it looks like the pain is still there?