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Programming Language Checklist

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Re: Programming Language Checklist

#101

Post by stOneskull »

cinnamonheart wrote: post #76
cies wrote: post #14

I got an idea for a language where the code in the file format is some intermediary language, which you write with an editor plugin that makes it more human-readable. The editor plugin (in contrast to existing language plugins) also translates the error msgs back to the human-readable code. Just an idea, but I could not get it to fit in the questionaire :)

Have you heard of Unison? If not, it may interest you -- it stores code in a syntax tree rather than as text directly. https://www.unisonweb.org/ >Unison is a language in which programs are not text. That is, the source of truth for a program is not its textual representation as source code, but its structured representation as an abstract syntax tree. It has some further goals for doing this which are really excitin…

Interesting. And friendly..

Re: Programming Language Checklist

#102

Post by stOneskull »

tluyben2 wrote: post #18
cryptica wrote: post #11

>> You appear to believe that: Syntax is what makes programming difficult This is exactly the problem. People spend so much effort looking for better syntax that they miss the most important part of programming. It's about design and structure, the syntax doesn't really matter at all. I don't even care if it's dynamically typed or statically typed or functional or not. A bad developer will produce bad code no matter…

> the syntax doesn't really matter at all. Somehow it does though: I find even j/k/apl easier to parse in my head than Ruby; somehow the ruby syntax gives me a headache. Not sure why that is, as I wrote a lot of code in it, but I find Python, C#, F#, Haskell or Kotlin far nicer to read and write. And, even though I understand the semantics and can write code in Ruby, if I have a choice, I would never touch it again.…

For me, it's end statements. I hate them.

Re: Programming Language Checklist

#104

Post by NOGDP »

everdev wrote: post #91

> [ ] Syntax is what makes programming difficult I'd love to see language design and language development treated as different disciplines. Just like developers were the first web designers, developers have been the first language designers. Ideally a language designer would only be tasked with how to express complex ideas in a simple, composable syntax. Language developers would be tasked with everything else: basic…

The amount of compiler and language theory needed to design a language that is also practical to use and implement is far greater than what a UI designer needs to know about web technology. If there was a language designer that wasn't also very knowledgeable about the implementation and use side of things, they would probably be pretty useless outside of syntactic sugar type stuff.

Re: Programming Language Checklist

#105

Post by Traubenfuchs »

cies wrote: post #14

I got an idea for a language where the code in the file format is some intermediary language, which you write with an editor plugin that makes it more human-readable. The editor plugin (in contrast to existing language plugins) also translates the error msgs back to the human-readable code. Just an idea, but I could not get it to fit in the questionaire :)

How about Java Bytecode?

You can write it in Java, Scala, Kotlin, Clojure, Ceylon, Groovy and many more.

Re: Programming Language Checklist

#106

Post by MattRix »

everdev wrote: post #91

> [ ] Syntax is what makes programming difficult I'd love to see language design and language development treated as different disciplines. Just like developers were the first web designers, developers have been the first language designers. Ideally a language designer would only be tasked with how to express complex ideas in a simple, composable syntax. Language developers would be tasked with everything else: basic…

Syntax is really not what makes most programming difficult at all. We have languages with really good syntax now, at least for the fairly low level most programming languages operate in (storing and retrieving variables, calling functions, etc).

The only way I could see what you're proposing making sense is if you got the linguist to design a much higher level language that operated on more concrete concepts. Some kind of domain specific language.

Re: Programming Language Checklist

#108

Post by nudq »

everdev wrote: post #91

> [ ] Syntax is what makes programming difficult I'd love to see language design and language development treated as different disciplines. Just like developers were the first web designers, developers have been the first language designers. Ideally a language designer would only be tasked with how to express complex ideas in a simple, composable syntax. Language developers would be tasked with everything else: basic…

> a linguist (with some understanding of development)

Your wish has been granted: Larry Wall, Perl 6.

Re: Programming Language Checklist

#109

Post by hajile »

mumblemumble wrote: post #99
rodw wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe JScript (Microsoft's proprietary JavaScript) and/or VBScript (VB sometimes shoehorned into a JavaScript-style role) would work for the first one, but to be honest I don't have enough experience with either to know if the "but worse" statement is fair. Also the "sweet spot" for Lua has some overlap with JavaScript but I don't think the "but worse" complaint is quite fair and I think Lua may actually pre-date JS.…

JScript is misunderstood. It isn't a proprietary JavaScript competitor. It's just Microsoft's implementation of JavaScript. They had to use a different name when talking about it in order to get around trademark issues. There were some differences from Netscape's implementation, but they're pretty minor compared to the dialectical differences between competing implementations of pretty much any other language.

You misunderstand the real evil of JScript. Microsoft made it to be a complete clone of Netscape's implementation.

When Netscape decided to standardize the language, they went to ECMA. Microsoft didn't have ECMA completely under their thumb, but did have some control.

Netscape wanted to fix some fundamental issues with JS, but MS had just spent a ton of money making their clone, so they insisted all those problematic bits stay right where they were.

So, JScript is to blame for most of the bad parts of Javascript and is therefore worthy of all the hate you could possible heap upon it.

Re: Programming Language Checklist

#110

Post by nostrademons »

shadowgovt wrote: post #79
grzm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like it goes back to at least November, 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20111103024132/http://colinm.org...

It's older than that. I won't say how I know, but bits and pieces of this were tumbling around in the undergrad hivemind of a certain Pittsburgh university for awhile before 2011. ;)

I remember seeing it back when I was interested in programming language design. I lost interest around 2010 (after concluding largely what the checklist was getting at, that there's no point developing a new programming language), so that would put it in the 2005-2010 period.

Ironically, most of the languages I've used in the last 5 years (Swift, Rust, Kotlin) post-date that period, so I was wrong in my conclusion.

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