On Thursday, 14 July 2016 at 12:12:34 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
On Thursday, 14 July 2016 at 11:38:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
On Wednesday, 13 July 2016 at 17:30:53 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
Software design is an iterative process because one can't
sort everything at once.
Not true. Ola can. :) (I just couldn't resist ...)
I don't have time for a long rant on this...
Now, now. Where's your sense of humor?
But if you are designing a truly new langauge (and D isn't),
then you create prototypes, then you build a framework that is
suitable for evolutionary design, then you spec it, then you
try to prove it sound, then you implement it then you trash it,
and redesign it and write a new spec. Once you have a
foundation where most things can be expressed in libraries you
have a good base for iterating and handing it to the world.
Such a language will never see the light of day. Never. And given
the constant changes in the IT business, you'll have to
constantly trash and re-implement things. Nobody will be able to
use the language in the real world, and it's using a language in
the real world that shows you where a language's strengths and
weaknesses are. I fear that some of the younger languages are
taking that path. They will be ready for use by the time we'll
have quark based processors or switched to telepathy altogether
:-)
What makes a language attractive is that you can actually use it
- here and now.
Of course, the first thing you ought to do is to look at
existing knowhow related to language design.
Which is what D did.
That's a no-brainer.
The alternative, to just iterate, is what gives you languages
like Perl and Php.
... which, in fairness, where never meant to be carefully
designed languages. Just convenient hacks for everyday tasks.
