I've never written a programming language. I have built a number of constructed languages[1] over the past few decades, which is an equally selfish (and thankle

I've never written a programming language. I have built a number of constructed languages[1] over the past few decades, which is an equally selfish (and thankless) task. Less tangentially, I've worked for the past 8 years on building a HTML5 canvas library in Javascript[2]. I don't ever see people talking about JS libraries in terms of computer language design but I think, in a way, that is effectively what a (good) library is doing: building new, sometimes more developer-friendly, ways of conceptualising and creating programs that do stuff using novel APIs, syntax, state, etc. There's a lot in the OP that resonates with my experience: - "once you design a programming language you fall down a rabbit hole" - I've lost 8 years of my life to my project; but I've also gained 8 years of learning skills and insights that do translate to my everyday work as a frontend developer. For instance, almost all of my knowledge about accessibility comes from trying out many (many) different approaches to making the canvas element more accessible. - "You keep adding new features that are really cool" - Guilty! My library doesn't need an integrated reaction-diffusion engine, but somehow it's acquired one along the way. Similar story with the reduced palette filter which, while a lot of fun to build and play with, remains too slow for use in production eg dithering live-stream video. - "It also affects your communication with the rest of the programming community" - Because of the need for speedy calculations, I've developed an approach to programming Javascript which tends to avoid slower functionality. This sometimes leads to me writing code that could/should be written in a clearer, more concise and understandable way: 99% of JS code doesn't need to be super-fast, just fast enough! [1] - for example, this one: https://gevey.rikweb.org.uk/ https://gevey.rikweb.org.uk/ [2] - Scrawl-canvas - https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas