4 ms·

> So the author is correct: don't write a programming language unless you are prepared to be marked and scarred for life. I write and wrote internal languages

> So the author is correct: don't write a programming language unless you are prepared to be marked and scarred for life. I write and wrote internal languages mostly; a bunch of them made it to production inside larger (for my country) companies for years and even a decade. The scarring part is that I always add the features I want and when I go to a mainstream language, I always miss those features. So since 2018 we have been doing a new language and one of them will be publicly launched this or next year so I can at least use that for day to day programming without being annoyed by missing features. Note that I already have that using Racket with a bunch of macros but in my business it is easier to introduce your own language than use Racket...

valenterry 5y ago
> Note that I already have that using Racket with a bunch of macros but in my business it is easier to introduce your own language than use Racket... Why is it easier?
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Most people are allergic for lisp likes. Not sure why but it has since always been blocked. I even did a lispy but with <> instead 20 years ago and that was OK (it was the xml for everything hype) while with () it was rejected. I had a talk with the cto of one of our bigger infra structure partners and he had exactly the same issue, so he replaced the () with [] and suddenly it was fine. So he has had scheme in their products for over 10 years but with [] because people are allergic to (). I can obviously do the same with racket but if no () then I rather have another syntax all together.
  - valenterry 5y ago
    Ah, it's sad to hear that. People can be so emotional, just because of a bit of syntax. But since you have full control, you could introduce some extra syntactic sugar as well and desugar it into regular lisp/racket syntax before parsing, no? As an alternative with a completely different syntax, I found Scala to be extremely nice for building DSLs. Probably the best typesafe language for DSLs out there. It's only really good on the JVM though.
DougBTX 5y ago
Out of interest, what are the features you miss?

valenterry 5y ago

> Note that I already have that using Racket with a bunch of macros but in my business it is easier to introduce your own language than use Racket... Why is it easier?

tluyben2 5y ago
Most people are allergic for lisp likes. Not sure why but it has since always been blocked. I even did a lispy but with <> instead 20 years ago and that was OK (it was the xml for everything hype) while with () it was rejected. I had a talk with the cto of one of our bigger infra structure partners and he had exactly the same issue, so he replaced the () with [] and suddenly it was fine. So he has had scheme in their products for over 10 years but with [] because people are allergic to (). I can obviously do the same with racket but if no () then I rather have another syntax all together.
- valenterry 5y ago
  Ah, it's sad to hear that. People can be so emotional, just because of a bit of syntax. But since you have full control, you could introduce some extra syntactic sugar as well and desugar it into regular lisp/racket syntax before parsing, no? As an alternative with a completely different syntax, I found Scala to be extremely nice for building DSLs. Probably the best typesafe language for DSLs out there. It's only really good on the JVM though.

DougBTX 5y ago

Out of interest, what are the features you miss?