www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D.announce - So You Want To Write Your Own Language

reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
This has resurfaced on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/
Dec 23 2015
next sibling parent reply Joakim <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 01:08:38 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 This has resurfaced on Reddit:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/


Will you be moving that article and your other work to your own 
domain?  One reddit commenter says that drdobbs link crashed his 
chrome tab, I've seen another drdobbs article start repeatedly 
reloading in a loop, and a Google search for a random phrase from 
this article doesn't even turn up this link but some spam site 
called impythonist that copy-pasted your article.

Time to give your old articles a better home, I think, assuming 
you have the copyright or can get it.
Dec 23 2015
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/23/2015 7:35 PM, Joakim wrote:

 On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 01:08:38 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 This has resurfaced on Reddit:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/


 Will you be moving that article and your other work to your own domain?  One
 reddit commenter says that drdobbs link crashed his chrome tab, I've seen
 another drdobbs article start repeatedly reloading in a loop, and a Google
 search for a random phrase from this article doesn't even turn up this link but
 some spam site called impythonist that copy-pasted your article.

 Time to give your old articles a better home, I think, assuming you have the
 copyright or can get it.


https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/b89.html
Dec 24 2015
next sibling parent reply Joakim <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 13:03:03 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 On 12/23/2015 7:35 PM, Joakim wrote:

 On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 01:08:38 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 This has resurfaced on Reddit:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/


 Will you be moving that article and your other work to your 
 own domain?  One
 reddit commenter says that drdobbs link crashed his chrome 
 tab, I've seen
 another drdobbs article start repeatedly reloading in a loop, 
 and a Google
 search for a random phrase from this article doesn't even turn 
 up this link but
 some spam site called impythonist that copy-pasted your 
 article.

 Time to give your old articles a better home, I think, 
 assuming you have the
 copyright or can get it.


 https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/b89.html


That's a different article, the Gimli one, not the one with 
practical advice.  Also, I get a certificate error when I click 
on it, because it doesn't apply for the www subdomain.
Dec 24 2015
parent reply Joakim <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 13:21:45 UTC, Joakim wrote:

 On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 13:03:03 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 On 12/23/2015 7:35 PM, Joakim wrote:

 [...]


 https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/b89.html


 That's a different article, the Gimli one, not the one with 
 practical advice.  Also, I get a certificate error when I click 
 on it, because it doesn't apply for the www subdomain.


Ah, I see you have it here instead:

https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/b90.html

Any idea why it's not indexed?
Dec 24 2015
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/24/2015 5:25 AM, Joakim wrote:

 Ah, I see you have it here instead:

 https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/b90.html

 Any idea why it's not indexed?


It's in the menu on the left.
Dec 24 2015
parent Joakim <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Friday, 25 December 2015 at 02:56:31 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 12/24/2015 5:25 AM, Joakim wrote:

 Ah, I see you have it here instead:

 https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/b90.html

 Any idea why it's not indexed?


 It's in the menu on the left.


Never mind, I looked some more and it is in google's index.  When 
I initially tried googling the phrase "perhaps you should 
consider taking up a career as a chartered accountant instead of 
writing a language" from that piece, it only turned up the spam 
site, same when I try it now.  I'm used to Google being pretty 
good at finding specific phrases like that, so I thought the 
article wasn't indexed.  Guess google is slipping...
Dec 24 2015
prev sibling parent The Old One <vaka.vanha example.com> writes:
On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 13:03:03 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 On 12/23/2015 7:35 PM, Joakim wrote:

 On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 01:08:38 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 Time to give your old articles a better home, I think, 
 assuming you have the
 copyright or can get it.


 https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/b89.html


Firefox gives me this:

www.digitalmars.com uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate is only valid for digitalmars.com
(Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)

And I believe this is an old problem.
Dec 24 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent BLM768 <blm768 gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 01:08:38 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 This has resurfaced on Reddit:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/


I might end up using this. It seems like there aren't many better 
ways to really learn about programming than to build one's own 
language.
Dec 23 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent Minas Mina <minas_0 hotmail.co.uk> writes:
On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 01:08:38 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 This has resurfaced on Reddit:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/


Very good article, thanks!
Dec 23 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Jakob Jenkov <jakob jenkov.com> writes:
On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 01:08:38 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 This has resurfaced on Reddit:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/



Hi Walther, interesting article. I guess it's like with 
entrepreneurship in general. It's a lot of work and lots of 
people will tell that you don't have what it takes, it won't 
work, you can't beat the big guys etc. But, as you progress and 
they see the results, more and more of them change their "no" to 
"maybe", "hmm..." and "yes".

I am working on a cloud project where we will also need to 
implement a little language that can run inside our cloud. The 
constraints are quite different from a general purpose language 
in terms of compilation / interpretation time, memory usage etc. 
so the design will probably be different than e.g. D.

I am looking forward to this project. Yes, it's geeky, and yes, 
it will probably "suck" in the first versions - but eventually we 
will get there, and it will work just fine.
Dec 24 2015
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/24/2015 3:43 AM, Jakob Jenkov wrote:

 I am working on a cloud project where we will also need to implement a little
 language that can run inside our cloud. The constraints are quite different
from
 a general purpose language in terms of compilation / interpretation time,
memory
 usage etc. so the design will probably be different than e.g. D.

 I am looking forward to this project. Yes, it's geeky, and yes, it will
probably
 "suck" in the first versions - but eventually we will get there, and it will
 work just fine.


I wish you the best for it.
Dec 24 2015
prev sibling parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 24/12/15 02:08, Walter Bright wrote:

 This has resurfaced on Reddit:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/


In the comments, about the cluttered syntax. For the attributes, due to 
legacy reasons, it seems like D got all the defaults wrong. System 
instead of safe, mutable instead of immutable, not pure instead of pure 
and so on. We might not be able to get rid of any attributes but if some 
of these defaults were different perhaps it would not be necessary to 
use so many attributes all the time.

I know that many here don't agree but personally I think the language 
could have less syntax it had AST macros. Some syntax that is built-in 
now could be moved to library code in the form of macros.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Dec 24 2015
next sibling parent The Old One <vaka.vanha example.com> writes:
On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 16:37:29 UTC, Jacob Carlborg 
wrote:

 On 24/12/15 02:08, Walter Bright wrote:

 This has resurfaced on Reddit:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/


 In the comments, about the cluttered syntax. For the 
 attributes, due to legacy reasons, it seems like D got all the 
 defaults wrong. System instead of safe, mutable instead of 
 immutable, not pure instead of pure and so on. We might not be 
 able to get rid of any attributes but if some of these defaults 
 were different perhaps it would not be necessary to use so many 
 attributes all the time.

 I know that many here don't agree but personally I think the 
 language could have less syntax it had AST macros. Some syntax 
 that is built-in now could be moved to library code in the form 
 of macros.


I agree. As we all know, these choices have much to do with 
trying not to disturb all the welcome people from C/C++. But now 
that D is becoming a more self-confident language, and a larger 
percentage of newcomers to D have other backgrounds than C/C++, 
it is becoming increasingly important to have the language "do 
the Right Thing" from the outset.

By now the former C/C++ programmer has to learn an entirely new 
language, as compared to 5 or especially 10 years ago, when D 
could (well, at least sarcastically) be described as just another 
Dialect of C.

Today, D is a proud and strong, and not even a new, language, and 
the Default choices of system/safe, (im)mutable, (not)safe, etc., 
should be based only on choices that are obvious when we look at 
D now and in the foreseeable future. Not on what the past was.
Dec 24 2015
prev sibling parent reply Jakob Jenkov <jakob jenkov.com> writes:
On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 16:37:29 UTC, Jacob Carlborg 
wrote:

 On 24/12/15 02:08, Walter Bright wrote:

 This has resurfaced on Reddit:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/


 In the comments, about the cluttered syntax. For the 
 attributes, due to legacy reasons, it seems like D got all the 
 defaults wrong. System instead of safe, mutable instead of 
 immutable, not pure instead of pure and so on. We might not be 
 able to get rid of any attributes but if some of these defaults 
 were different perhaps it would not be necessary to use so many 
 attributes all the time.

 I know that many here don't agree but personally I think the 
 language could have less syntax it had AST macros. Some syntax 
 that is built-in now could be moved to library code in the form 
 of macros.



I think it depends a lot on your personal preference. For 
instance, I am always annoyed about immutable types being forced 
upon me (okay, they wouldn't be forced, but I'd have to work to 
get rid of them). I like mutable types.

Regarding the AST macros - I simply don't know enough about how 
that works in practice to have an opinion. Java doesn't have that 
stuff, so I don't know what I am missing :-)
Dec 24 2015
parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 25/12/15 04:25, Jakob Jenkov wrote:


 I think it depends a lot on your personal preference. For instance, I am
 always annoyed about immutable types being forced upon me (okay, they
 wouldn't be forced, but I'd have to work to get rid of them). I like
 mutable types.


Yeah, we don't need to flip all the defaults, but something like 
safe/system has clearly the wrong default.


 Regarding the AST macros - I simply don't know enough about how that
 works in practice to have an opinion. Java doesn't have that stuff, so I
 don't know what I am missing :-)


There's a lot of stuff that Java doesn't have ;). In theory, all the 
lowerings that the compiler already does could be implemented with AST 
macros. "scope" is lowered to try-catch-finally, "foreach" is lowered to 
a "for" loop and so on.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Dec 26 2015
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 12/26/2015 4:05 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 There's a lot of stuff that Java doesn't have ;). In theory, all the lowerings
 that the compiler already does could be implemented with AST macros. "scope" is
 lowered to try-catch-finally, "foreach" is lowered to a "for" loop and so on.



Many of the lowerings require semantic information that is not available from
ASTs.
Dec 26 2015
parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2015-12-27 00:55, Walter Bright wrote:


 Many of the lowerings require semantic information that is not available
 from ASTs.


Hence the "in theory" ;). It's hard to tell what would be possible to 
implement with AST macros without implementing the complete macro system 
and use it. Of course it's possible to look what's possible in other 
languages.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Dec 28 2015