I've been pretty interested in programming language research and development. Elixir is a neat case: it's extremely practical, but it makes use of some less-tha

I've been pretty interested in programming language research and development. Elixir is a neat case: it's extremely practical, but it makes use of some less-than-mainstream features quite prominently. (Extensive pattern matching and full-blown AST-based macros come to mind immediately.) Is there anyone doing research on these kinds of ancillary features? Like, what makes a language worth using? What kinds of tools are most important for developers to have? Just curious.