[antlr-interest] Language Design

[Dave Thomas]

Exactly, it's the former point on how to make a language usable for humans,
to get "out of the gate," but provide building blocks for users to extend
too.

Thanks Andreas, Ron, and Ter!  I also read Martin Fowler's DSL book and he
has some general tips on API design.  With your help, I think I've got my
work cut out for me.

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 6:17 PM, Andreas Stefik <stefika at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> Are you looking for information on how to make language's usable to
> humans, or more technical content? If the former, I could point you to
> some very recent academic literature on the topic, including some of
> my own. If the latter, sources like the Dragon book are invaluable, as
> you already know, although it's more algorithmic than design related.
> If the former, it turns out to be the case that word and syntax choice
> can make a truly huge differences to novices trying to get "out of the
> gate" with your language. Here's one of my recent papers on that:
> http://www.cs.siue.edu/~astefik/papers/StefikPlateau2011.pdf
>
> Similarly, there are a number of papers out by the CMU group on
> natural programming: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~NatProg/ That work isn't
> all about programming languages, really, but there is a few papers in
> there on API design that might be relevant for you (many by Jeff
> Stylos). Also, when it comes to usability of type systems, or whether
> not you should include aspect-oriented features, Stefan Hanenberg's
> work is highly relevant.
>
> Anyway, I don't know if that helps, as it's more on the language
> usability side (if that is a consideration for you), but there are
> some thoughts,
>
> Stefik
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 3:49 PM, Ron Burk <ronburk at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost."
> >
> >     http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/classic/message2011.html
> >
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