Functional programming paradigms? Matching? Complex syntax? Sorry but either I've missed the point, or you've lost me. If we're trying to create tools for non-Developers to build software, this isn't it. You can pretty much already just ask Claude/Codex/whatever and it'll build you a thing™ and it'll probably work. You don't even need to read the code.
I have to admit, it's kinda nice to read a comment that's simply complaining about programming language design again. For a second I thought there wasn't even going to be mention of AI, but alas...
Millions of people learn and practice functional reactive programming every day, without considering themselves software developers.
They just use spreadsheets.
Many of the lofty sounding concepts of programming were invented to make things simpler. Show them from a right aspect, and they are quite approachable to a non-engineer.
> Developers deal with two broad categories of work.
> - Describing the logic of the problem they are solving using language constructs like if, loop, var etc.
> - Working with computers to run those problems using constucts like $PATH, /var/tmp and AWS.
> There are a lot of humans who can do the first work fine but don’t have the time to master the second category. I call these humans “makers”.
the idea seems to be to make an end-user programming language for makers. makers want to make not ask ai to make, and they are capable of writing code, actually, it's just all the computer plumbing that's too much of a pain.
a sophisticated programming language to write personal software that cuts out the computer plumbing would be something i'd love. i'm not fully clear how that would be done, but i like the thought.
500 million years ago a former colleague created "Electric File Clerk" which became profile which became filepro which technically still exists today.
It was a "RAD, rapid application development system basically the proto ms access. The idea was the user is a dentist or lawyer, not a developer, but needs to make their own software because at that time almost no canned software existed yet.
The doctor or florist or whatever could make their own database-backed application without writing a line of code. Just draw screens and define screens and fields and report formats.
AppleScript "English" was designed to be intuitive and easy to understand (or so claimed various manuals), but boy howdy did I spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what "English" it did accept.
I would say that if you get the syntax and docs right functional programming paradigms and matching can be very intuitive for non programmers. you don't have to build up a mental model of variables versus objects and passing by value or reference.
So I poked around... this is really interesting. So you take language in text and make IR, but also could be made IR directly. That is very interesting.
Potentially I could make a version without curly braces or some weird syntax and it could be compiled in IR and still be same language :).
Kind of like MS and VB and C# haha.
I like what you did so far, I will keep an eye, maybe help if I can.
They just use spreadsheets.
Many of the lofty sounding concepts of programming were invented to make things simpler. Show them from a right aspect, and they are quite approachable to a non-engineer.
> My hypothesis
> Developers deal with two broad categories of work.
> - Describing the logic of the problem they are solving using language constructs like if, loop, var etc. > - Working with computers to run those problems using constucts like $PATH, /var/tmp and AWS.
> There are a lot of humans who can do the first work fine but don’t have the time to master the second category. I call these humans “makers”.
the idea seems to be to make an end-user programming language for makers. makers want to make not ask ai to make, and they are capable of writing code, actually, it's just all the computer plumbing that's too much of a pain.
a sophisticated programming language to write personal software that cuts out the computer plumbing would be something i'd love. i'm not fully clear how that would be done, but i like the thought.
It was a "RAD, rapid application development system basically the proto ms access. The idea was the user is a dentist or lawyer, not a developer, but needs to make their own software because at that time almost no canned software existed yet.
The doctor or florist or whatever could make their own database-backed application without writing a line of code. Just draw screens and define screens and fields and report formats.
No language at all, since no code.
We are talking trs-80 model I here...
Anyhow, will enjoy discovering EYG as well.
Potentially I could make a version without curly braces or some weird syntax and it could be compiled in IR and still be same language :).
Kind of like MS and VB and C# haha.
I like what you did so far, I will keep an eye, maybe help if I can.