Matt Warren on Language Design

Matt provides us with some insights into the world of language design, a field that most of us have only dabbled in via a university course, with his discussion of keywords, operators and the problems with extending an existing programming language after its original release.

It amazes me how difficult it is to design new features to a programming language. Once a language is baked in its original form it’s almost impossible to add new semantics let alone syntax rules. Operators are hellish. You want to invent new ones, but you are generally limited to the common symbols found on the standard keyboard.

Click here to read his entire post (and his 'interesting' conclusion): Programming in the Blue