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Comment by Timwi | Hacker News Reader

I'm so excited to see that the idea of creating new programming languages is getting more popular. There is definitely a lot of space in which to explore more creativity; we haven't even remotely begun to scratch the surface of what's possible!

I just wish more tooling existed that was language-agnostic so that it's easier to get off the ground with something “serious”. I'm talking debuggers, parse-tree-aware diffs, autocompletion like Intellisense, etc.

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Hard agree. Even without going deep on a "serious language" there's a universe of DSLs that's mostly unexplored.

Debuggers are the outlier in your group but there's not exactly a void for those other wishes. As just one slice, building a tree-sitter [1] grammar gives the basis for good editor integration [2], formatters [3], structural diff [4] and other dev tools. Similarly if you're expressing some form of program, targeting LLVM IR connects your creation with a fairly extensive compiler toolchain.

Language agnostic tooling exists, but there still needs to be some abstraction layer and a mapping to that.

[1]: https://tree-sitter.github.io/

[2]: https://zed.dev/blog/syntax-aware-editing

[3]: https://topiary.tweag.io

[4]: https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk

The advent of the [language server protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol) made me really excited that more abstraction layers for language-specific tooling would pop up -- I feel like we haven't seen as much of that as I would like?

The lack of such tooling is kind of a feature. Writing your own language is a great way to learn, but almost all of them shouldn't be used for anything serious

Isn't this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Make it nearly impossible to create a new language with a sufficient amount of backing tooling, and sure, you'll find that nearly all new languages should not be used.

I had a similar thought chain. I came to the conclusion, though: You're always going to need people to learn how to build compilers and parsers and lexers. But for a language to be taken seriously, you kind of need a group of people. but from another language or languages. To be analogous, if John Carmack was an indie game developer tomorrow, we'd all buy his games probably. But if I publish a game tomorrow, how many of us are buying it?

Now, imagine five semi-core devs of Python get together and make a compiled language.

edited because i use a local llm on my phone for speech-to-text and i was testing with nearly white noise (fans and aerated water...) "FUTO"

The lack of such tooling may be precisely why many potentially great "indie" languages never succeed.

You’re massively overstating things there.

The reason indie languages never succeed is because without a strong corporate backer or other such commitment to longevity, the risk of doing anything serious in it only to have to rewrite the entire thing in the next new indie language is far too great. Or at least it should be for any seasoned engineer worth their paycheck.

Tooling helps prove that. But a strong standard library and a proven track record counts for so much more.

at some point you risk taking on maintaining the project, which may sound great to some people. i've worked places that bought a company to own a product we used that cost too much in maint contracts. I did cloud SaaS "1 week free demo" platform for that product so our company could recoup the cost of bringing on the maintenance burden in-house. I get the aversion to the risk of using new/untested/fringe products that you may be the only entity that actually can keep it running.

I'm not a "developer". I am a ham. I am not a hamster.

> we haven't even remotely begun to scratch the surface of what's possible

Huh?

Programming languages have done lots and lots of ideas.

So many that they're starting to blend together.

They absolutely have, but like the person you're responding to, I also believe there's way more to be done. It's hard to imagine things that don't exists yet (and it's not going to be me) but encouraging experimentation is key.

> I'm so excited to see that the idea of creating new programming languages is getting more popular.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards_2x.png

Sure, when everyone and his dog can publish their (soon to be unmaintained once the novelty feelings wear off) language, the world will be a better place.

This is a really awful way to look at artistic expression. I will note, though, that one of the complaints of the Roman empire in its twilight years was that everyone wanted to write a book, so I guess this 'old man shakes stick at enjoyment' thing has been around for quite awhile.

Do you have any further info on this "one of the complaints of the Roman empire in its twilight years was that everyone wanted to write a book".

I'm curious about some of the seemingly slightly oddball signs of late stage civilisation collapse and I'd not seen this one mentioned before?

Ah. I am perpetuating a meme that is almost a century old. :D

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/

This but unironically.

And the XKCD character got the reason wrong. People aren't making languages because they think there are too many languages.

As far as I'm concerned, the more the better. I make languages because there aren't enough.

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