We Should be Able to Change our Languages

Jimmy Millerprojectspostsadventtalksgithub Programming languages are fixed artifacts. Defined by committee or that one really smart person. They are sacred artifacts whose contours are fixed for good reasons. The idea of changing your programming language, of customizing it for your own needs, is a drastic measure that should never be done. Or at least that's how people act. In a world where software is becoming increasingly flexible, moldable, editable, our programming languages resist this change. Instead, we build incredibly complicated build systems. We create complex conventions that give us the semantics we wished our languages had. We reuse existing language constructs and give them different meanings. We form committees to advocate for changes to our languages, bike-shedding endlessly, because the idea of just letting each individual codebase make its own decisions offends our sensibilities. Why We Resist# The ability for people to define their language to be the way they want…