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> Every year, or so, I'll design a programming language on paper ...

Where do I subscribe?

> Each time the design is different, with different priorities etc.

Classic trilemmas. Nice.

Scott McCloud's triangle for style of illustrations was a eureka moment for me. The tips are ideographic, textual, and realism (IIRC). All comics lie somewhere within that triangle (solution space). Mind blown.

There are many either-or tradeoffs: closer to the metal vs abstractions, explicit memory management vs garbage collectors, etc.

But there's probably also a few trilemmas, like functional vs imperative vs declarative.

Anywho. Just a casual notion. I'd love to see a big list of design decisions for programming languages.

Today's embarrassment of riches has reduced the enthusiasm for language jihads. But it'd still be nice to have something more than esthetics and vibes to guide our choices.




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