Hi, Dave Herman recently tweeted[1] that consulting a PL specialist was a good idea for little languages to avoid common foundational mistakes, specifically mentioning templating systems and configuration files.
So when designing(or evolving) a little language: what beginners mistakes should you avoid? (some in the subsequent tweets I’ve copied below) When should you consult a PL specialist? (and how do you identify a PL specialist?) More generally, can you recommend resources a developer (without a background in language design) should refer to if they are building a simple templating system, application configuration file, etc. - that may grow into a little language? Kind regards, Stephen PS please forgive me if this is the wrong list for this question. [1] https://twitter.com/littlecalculist/status/1092160821944213504?s=21 > It's frustrating that PL is considered such a specialization that PL people > only get brought in for big languages. There are vastly more little languages > everywhere. People often don't realize their little language needs better > underpinnings until very late, if at all. Common mistakes tweeted by Dave Herman in subsequent thread; > Scenario-solving: language design at its heart is figuring out what your > composable primitives are. Too often, people think of use cases one scenario > at a time and just sort of glue them together w/o generalizing and > simplifying. > Reinventing lexical scope: many systems start by using string concatenation > as their core model, instead of composing modules with a rationalized notion > of scope. Another common scoping mistake is exposing variables as mutating a > global scope. > Lack of abstraction mechanisms: when you don't think of yourself as designing > a language, you put up with boilerplate and copy-pasta. > Lack of strategy for general-purpose logic: ultimately most DSLs end up > needing general-purpose programming language—often it's in a minority of > cases but when you need it you really need it. The best ones IMO have clear > extension points and contracts with a general-purpose PL. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
