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Same here about finding resources for language design. I wish there was some course that could teach me language design so that I can (better) predict how my d
by asrp 9y ago
Same here about finding resources for language design.
I wish there was some course that could teach me language design so that I can (better) predict how my decisions will affect the final result.
Plus how much can reasonably I "pack" into the language [1] in terms of notation and cognitive load when used.
Maybe some resource about choosing notation would be nice too (as opposed to parsing notation once chosen). When I try to pick many ideas from different places, I'm sometimes surprised by collisions in notation.
In general, I have to idea in what model I have to run my estimates.
What are some examples of consequences taught through the course you linked to?
[1] I'm talking about textual languages only for now.
- ftomassetti 9y agoMaybe you could use some information theory to calculate the entropy of your language and evaluate when it makes sense to introduce new concepts. I played with this idea but I have never used it in practice for designing languages.
- asrp 9y agoYeah, I was also thinking along those lines when writing my comment. That there trade-offs are like those in a Huffman tree. So one easily accessible/expresible feature means many more distant ones. Has someone thought and wrote about this? And there are other aspects that don't quite fit the information theory model (like using infix notation for operators or not, from Paul Graham's post).