5 ms·

I'll take the bait and provide evidence on why you should write a programming language. First, it's technically very difficult, but you will gain deeper insigh

I'll take the bait and provide evidence on why you should write a programming language. First, it's technically very difficult, but you will gain deeper insight into the art of the craft. So, if you are a TC chaser or career minded person, then spending half a year writing a language will help you master the coding aspect of the game. I've started many languages since I started college, and each one was instructional. (I'm now 40 and an early retiree) Second, it's fun. Third, it may turn into something new. If some people don't write a new programming language, then we are stuck with what we have. This advice basically admits that the status quo is good enough. The authors saying that the language, as a project, is a lifetime appointment? Well, this reveals everything. I believe if you want to do a programming language, then you must be willing to invest at least a decade or two. So, here, I am at forty preparing to launch a SaaS around a language that I designed ( http://www.adama-lang.org/ http://www.adama-lang.org/ ). The kicker, I believe, is that a project like this requires wandering the desert alone for quite a while. I'm preparing to launch, and I just started to load test my shiny new production cluster. Low and behold, it sucks. Fortunately, I have a tremendous number of dashboards and isolated it to how I'm interacting with RDS. I've got my work cut out for me which I'll write about. However, I have a potentially interesting business precisely because I evolved a language which solved a niche use-case. The number of problems that I have had to solve up to this point is not for the faint of heart. Life and reality are harsh mistresses. So, maybe, yes, you can save yourself some heartache by not writing a language. Perhaps, a better way to think or phase this is "Writing a programming language is a lonely affair that will most likely end in tragedy after a long death march".

chalst 5y ago
With respect to your first point, I'm reminded of Peter Alvaro's comment "the only good reason to design a programming language is to shape your understanding of the problem". He points out that he was the only user of his first PL, but he had no regrets of about that, because it shaped all his later thought in his research. From http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5569 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5569 - Three Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Languages. Alvaro's talk led to an HN discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19428433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19428433
- auggierose 5y ago
  The lambda the ultimate link doesn't work anymore; is that site still alive??
  - slevcom 5y ago
    Here it is on YouTube https://youtu.be/oa0qq75i9oc https://youtu.be/oa0qq75i9oc
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    It's slow, but there. It's just a link to this though in case you can't see it: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/language-design-process/ https://www.infoq.com/presentations/language-design-process/
solatic 5y ago
> Third, it may turn into something new. If some people don't write a new programming language, then we are stuck with what we have. This advice basically admits that the status quo is good enough... The authors saying that the language, as a project, is a lifetime appointment? Well, this reveals everything. I believe if you want to do a programming language, then you must be willing to invest at least a decade or two. Sounds like someone should persuade some big-name university to hand out honorary PhDs to people who build new languages that produce demonstrable value (even if the value is not business value). Seems to be the criteria for a PhD, anyway.
coldcode 5y ago
To solve a problem about 23 years ago I wrote a programming language + interpreter. It was meant to be a simple language to write phone surveys in, so basically a kind of DSL for a single purpose. The programmers who built the survey taking system that would use my language discovered they could write much of it in the language itself, which surprised me a lot. Was a really fun project. No idea what happened to it.

chalst 5y ago

With respect to your first point, I'm reminded of Peter Alvaro's comment "the only good reason to design a programming language is to shape your understanding of the problem". He points out that he was the only user of his first PL, but he had no regrets of about that, because it shaped all his later thought in his research. From http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5569 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5569 - Three Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Languages. Alvaro's talk led to an HN discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19428433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19428433

auggierose 5y ago
The lambda the ultimate link doesn't work anymore; is that site still alive??
- slevcom 5y ago
  Here it is on YouTube https://youtu.be/oa0qq75i9oc https://youtu.be/oa0qq75i9oc
- ModernMech 5y ago
  It's slow, but there. It's just a link to this though in case you can't see it: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/language-design-process/ https://www.infoq.com/presentations/language-design-process/

solatic 5y ago

> Third, it may turn into something new. If some people don't write a new programming language, then we are stuck with what we have. This advice basically admits that the status quo is good enough... The authors saying that the language, as a project, is a lifetime appointment? Well, this reveals everything. I believe if you want to do a programming language, then you must be willing to invest at least a decade or two. Sounds like someone should persuade some big-name university to hand out honorary PhDs to people who build new languages that produce demonstrable value (even if the value is not business value). Seems to be the criteria for a PhD, anyway.

coldcode 5y ago

To solve a problem about 23 years ago I wrote a programming language + interpreter. It was meant to be a simple language to write phone surveys in, so basically a kind of DSL for a single purpose. The programmers who built the survey taking system that would use my language discovered they could write much of it in the language itself, which surprised me a lot. Was a really fun project. No idea what happened to it.