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i think this is cool. i could learn new languages all day. however I've seen people argue on HN that writing language is a waste of time. why should we embark

i think this is cool. i could learn new languages all day. however I've seen people argue on HN that writing language is a waste of time. why should we embark on such an exercise?

bpicolo 8y ago
For fun and learning. In the last 10 years all sorts of new languages have come out and been successful. We're not nearly at the end game of language development.
s-shellfish 8y ago
It makes programming just about everything a billion times easier to think about. Every programming thing you have to work on is a map between the problem space and the finished program. The problem space itself can be thought of as a program. You are just mapping from one space to the other. That's what writing languages teaches you how to do.
brandmeyer 8y ago
For the chance to expand your mind. If you've never done it before, you'll learn a ton doing it the first time. If its been a while since you've done it, you may learn some new things in the processes given what you learned in the intervening years since the last time.
criddell 8y ago
Most of us probably would be wasting our time writing a general purpose programming language that we think could compete with Python or C. If you think smaller though, there's a ton of utility to be had in taking the ideas and applying them to domain specific languages. I don't know much about Racket, but it feels like that's its reason to be.
steveklabnik 8y ago
Some people love Yegge, some hate him. This post is... well it's a rant. But it kinda answers this question in an interesting way https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-food.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-foo...
- jmiserez 8y ago
  I didn’t realize it was from 2007 until I got to this tidbit: >By which I mean Machine Learning, since the term "AI" smacks of not just determinism, but also a distinct lack of VC funding.
mamcx 8y ago
> writing language Is all we do, in a way or other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule > Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. Thats why "Interpreter" is one of the common OO patterns on the book. I done a lot of micro-languages (later I found are called "Domain Specific Languages" by hipsters). I have one that build the Database interface code automatically from the .sql script that build the postgresql database. I code the database at hand, run "builddb.py" and it spit out all the mapping and part of the ORM layer. I doit with bad hacks, regex and stupid stuff (from a proper compiler construction perspective) but I only spend like half day doing it. Later, I also build the inserts/updates and other extra stuff that sometimes is useful. Then I also spit out both F# and swift code, with the same terrible hacks... ---- Now, after do this thing like millon times before I start to think that I'm a idiot that could have donde this MUCH better. So, this time as a side project I'm doing the same thing, like a ORM-made-as-language. And boy, this thing is fun. I not only can run "sql" agains my RDBMS but also with owm in-memory structures, similar to LINQ but, IMHO, better. Now, the thing is... if this little project get to a point where is good, why not release it as a language?

i think this is cool. i could learn new languages all day. however I've seen people argue on HN that writing language is a waste of time. why should we embark on such an exercise?

bpicolo 8y ago

For fun and learning. In the last 10 years all sorts of new languages have come out and been successful. We're not nearly at the end game of language development.

s-shellfish 8y ago

It makes programming just about everything a billion times easier to think about. Every programming thing you have to work on is a map between the problem space and the finished program. The problem space itself can be thought of as a program. You are just mapping from one space to the other. That's what writing languages teaches you how to do.

brandmeyer 8y ago

For the chance to expand your mind. If you've never done it before, you'll learn a ton doing it the first time. If its been a while since you've done it, you may learn some new things in the processes given what you learned in the intervening years since the last time.

criddell 8y ago

Most of us probably would be wasting our time writing a general purpose programming language that we think could compete with Python or C. If you think smaller though, there's a ton of utility to be had in taking the ideas and applying them to domain specific languages. I don't know much about Racket, but it feels like that's its reason to be.

steveklabnik 8y ago

Some people love Yegge, some hate him. This post is... well it's a rant. But it kinda answers this question in an interesting way https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-food.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-foo...

jmiserez 8y ago
I didn’t realize it was from 2007 until I got to this tidbit: >By which I mean Machine Learning, since the term "AI" smacks of not just determinism, but also a distinct lack of VC funding.

mamcx 8y ago

> writing language Is all we do, in a way or other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule > Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. Thats why "Interpreter" is one of the common OO patterns on the book. I done a lot of micro-languages (later I found are called "Domain Specific Languages" by hipsters). I have one that build the Database interface code automatically from the .sql script that build the postgresql database. I code the database at hand, run "builddb.py" and it spit out all the mapping and part of the ORM layer. I doit with bad hacks, regex and stupid stuff (from a proper compiler construction perspective) but I only spend like half day doing it. Later, I also build the inserts/updates and other extra stuff that sometimes is useful. Then I also spit out both F# and swift code, with the same terrible hacks... ---- Now, after do this thing like millon times before I start to think that I'm a idiot that could have donde this MUCH better. So, this time as a side project I'm doing the same thing, like a ORM-made-as-language. And boy, this thing is fun. I not only can run "sql" agains my RDBMS but also with owm in-memory structures, similar to LINQ but, IMHO, better. Now, the thing is... if this little project get to a point where is good, why not release it as a language?