I built a programming language using Claude Code • Hacker News Board

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#51

Post by raincole » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:22 PM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #26

andsoitis wrote: post #2

> While working on Cutlet, though, I allowed Claude to generate every single line of code. I didn’t even read any of the code. Instead, I built guardrails to make sure it worked correctly (more on that later). Impressive. As a practical matter, one wonders what th point would be in creating a new programming languages if the programmer no longer has to write or read code. Programming languages are after all the inter…

The constraints enforced in the language still matter. A language which offers certain correctness guarantees may still be the most efficient way to build a particular piece of software even when it's a machine writing the code. There may actually be more value in creating specialized languages now, not less. Most new languages historically go nowhere because convincing human programmers to spend the time it would ta…

> every AI coding bot will learn your new language

If there are millions of lines on github in your language.

Otherwise the 'teaching AI to write your language' part will occupy so much context and make it far less efficient that just using typescript.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#52

Post by craigmart » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

wavemode wrote: post #40

ivanjermakov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with a human writted blog post I believe we're at a point where it's not possible to accurately decide whether text is completely written by human, by computer, or something in between.

We're definitely not at that point. If this blog post is unedited LLM output, the blog owner needs to sell whatever model, setup and/or prompt he used for a million dollars, since it's clearly far beyond the state-of-the-art in terms of natural-sounding tone.

You can make an LLM sound very natural if you simply ask for it and provide enough text in the tone you’d like it to reproduce. Otherwise, it’s obvious that an LLM with no additional context will try to stick to the tone the company aligned it to produce

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#53

Post by idiotsecant » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

danielvaughn wrote: post #37

marssaxman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constraints enforced in the language still matter. A language which offers certain correctness guarantees may still be the most efficient way to build a particular piece of software even when it's a machine writing the code. There may actually be more value in creating specialized languages now, not less. Most new languages historically go nowhere because convincing human programmers to spend the time it would ta…

In addition, I think token efficiency will continue to be a problem. So you could imagine very terse programming languages that are roughly readable for a human, but optimized to be read by LLMs.

I think I remember seeing research right here on HN that terse languages don't actually help all that much

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#54

Post by Insanity » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC

danielvaughn wrote: post #37

marssaxman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constraints enforced in the language still matter. A language which offers certain correctness guarantees may still be the most efficient way to build a particular piece of software even when it's a machine writing the code. There may actually be more value in creating specialized languages now, not less. Most new languages historically go nowhere because convincing human programmers to spend the time it would ta…

In addition, I think token efficiency will continue to be a problem. So you could imagine very terse programming languages that are roughly readable for a human, but optimized to be read by LLMs.

That's an interesting idea. But IMO the real 'token saver' isn't in the language keywords but it's in the naming of things like variables, classes, etc.

There are languages that are already pretty sparse with keywords. e.g in Go you can write 'func main() string', no need to define that it's public, or static etc. So combining a less verbose language with 'codegolfing' the variables might be enough.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#55

Post by almog » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #36

marssaxman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constraints enforced in the language still matter. A language which offers certain correctness guarantees may still be the most efficient way to build a particular piece of software even when it's a machine writing the code. There may actually be more value in creating specialized languages now, not less. Most new languages historically go nowhere because convincing human programmers to spend the time it would ta…

> but every AI coding bot will learn your new language as a matter of course after its next update includes the contents of your website. That's assuming that your new, very unknown language gets slurped up in the next training session which seems unlikely. Couldn't you use RAG or have an LLM read the docs for your language?

Neither RAG nor loading the docs into the context window would produce any effective results. Not even including the grammar files and just few examples in the training set would help. To get any usable results you still need many many usage examples.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#56

Post by idiotsecant » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #35

andsoitis wrote: post #2

> While working on Cutlet, though, I allowed Claude to generate every single line of code. I didn’t even read any of the code. Instead, I built guardrails to make sure it worked correctly (more on that later). Impressive. As a practical matter, one wonders what th point would be in creating a new programming languages if the programmer no longer has to write or read code. Programming languages are after all the inter…

> Impressive. As a practical matter, one wonders what th point would be in creating a new programming languages if the programmer no longer has to write or read code. I'm working on a language as well (hoping to debut by end of month), but the premise of the language is that it's designed like so: 1) It maximizes local reasoning and minimizes global complexity 2) It makes the vast majority of bugs / illegal states im…

How does a programming language prevent the vast majority of bugs? I feel like we would all be using that language!

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#57

Post by righthand » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

rpowers wrote: post #11

righthand wrote: post #4

> I’ve also been able to radically reduce my dependency on third-party libraries in my JavaScript and Python projects. I often use LLMs to generate small utility functions that previously required pulling in dependencies from NPM or PyPI. This is such an interesting statement to me in the context of leftpad.

I'm imagining the amount of energy required to power the datacenter so that we can produce isEven() utility methods.

Also, neither over the wire dependency issues or code injection issues (the two major criticisms) are solved by using an llm to produce the code. Talk about shifting complexity. It would be better if every LSP had a general utility library generator built in.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#58

Post by bobjordan » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

I've been working on a large codebase that was already significant before LLM-assisted programming, leveraging code I’d written over a decade ago. Since integrating Claude and Codex, the system has evolved and grown massively. Realistically, there’s a lot in there now that I simply couldn't have built in a standard human lifetime without them.

That said, the core value of the software wouldn't exist without a human at the helm. It requires someone to expend the energy to guide it, explore the problem space, and weave hundreds of micro-plans into a coherent, usable system. It's a symbiotic relationship, but the ownership is clear. It’s like building a house: I could build one with a butter knife given enough time, but I'd rather use power tools. The tools don't own the house.

At this point, LLMs aren't going to autonomously architect a 400+ table schema, network 100+ services together, and build the UI/UX/CLI to interface with it all. Maybe we'll get there one day, but right now, building software at this scale still requires us to drive. I believe the author owns the language.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#59

Post by calvinmorrison » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #51

marssaxman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constraints enforced in the language still matter. A language which offers certain correctness guarantees may still be the most efficient way to build a particular piece of software even when it's a machine writing the code. There may actually be more value in creating specialized languages now, not less. Most new languages historically go nowhere because convincing human programmers to spend the time it would ta…

> every AI coding bot will learn your new language If there are millions of lines on github in your language. Otherwise the 'teaching AI to write your language' part will occupy so much context and make it far less efficient that just using typescript.

Uh not really. I am already having Claude read and then one-shot proprietary ERP code written in vintage closed source language OOP oriented BASIC with sparse documentation.... just needed to feed it in the millions of lines of code i have and it works.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#60

Post by idiotsecant » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:28 PM UTC

spelunker wrote: post #30

andsoitis wrote: post #2

> While working on Cutlet, though, I allowed Claude to generate every single line of code. I didn’t even read any of the code. Instead, I built guardrails to make sure it worked correctly (more on that later). Impressive. As a practical matter, one wonders what th point would be in creating a new programming languages if the programmer no longer has to write or read code. Programming languages are after all the inter…

Like everything generated by LLMs though, it is built on the shoulders of giants - what will happen to software if no one is creating new programming languages anymore? Does that matter?

I think the only hope is that AGI arises and picks up where humanity left off. Otherwise I think this is the long dark teatime of human engineering of all sorts.