What Counts as a Programming Language?
summary
Argues that what counts as a programming language depends on assumed context and shows concrete work: implements compilers and interpreters, refactors a lexer from a giant case statement to tiered conditionals only to learn compilers prioritize speed over legibility, and uses domain-specific tools like Alloy (set solver to find model violations) and Cipher (diagram-like graph queries) to catch bugs earlier than general-purpose languages; recommends hunting similar/different contexts to transfer practical techniques rather than arguing definitions.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Start
- 6:29Is a markup language a programming language?
- 9:11Context: The descriptors that characterize our specific situation.
- 18:47"General" programming languages differ from domain-specific programming languages.
- 27:41There may be more value in learning to identify contexts, and share information across contexts, than in formalizing our understanding of the differences between DSLs in two separate domains.
- 29:08What principles, ideas, or "best practices" do you think of as always right, or generally right?
- 29:49Maybe there is a context in which that is the case.
- 31:06Go looking for contexts that are different from yours to better understand why your best practices work in your context.
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