Language Syntax Design

The cluster discusses trade-offs in programming language design, particularly syntax simplicity versus expressiveness, feature bloat, and the balance between minimalism and powerful constructs like syntactic sugar.

➡️ Stable 0.5x Programming Languages
6,148
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#3147
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

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Keywords

TL JIT E.g PG JavaScript DR norvig.com MO NUL language syntax languages features language features feature syntactic sugar design patterns design syntactic

Sample Comments

zabzonk Mar 20, 2024 View on HN

why do you think the designers of those new languages know what is good for you?

joevandyk Jan 6, 2010 View on HN

Why would adopting language X's features make X less awesome?

singularity2001 May 10, 2025 View on HN

how can the next great language avoid the trap of syntax bloat while providing the same extraordinary functionality

dmitriid Oct 29, 2017 View on HN

It's basically a struggle between "too much syntax" and "not enough syntax" :)

jolux Dec 30, 2021 View on HN

Tools like this are often a sign that the language was under-designed.

instig007 Nov 8, 2024 View on HN

re-inventing known language features in inferior languages isn't more real-world, it's a self-inflicting kool-aid thirst ^_^

indulona Nov 10, 2024 View on HN

just because there are more keywords/syntax, it does not necessarily mean it has to be ugly. they could have made better decisions when designing the language.

lofaszvanitt Jun 27, 2025 View on HN

What no? Why can't we have nice things, like concise, easy to remember, not overly elaborate syntax?

themihai Oct 5, 2016 View on HN

You forgot to respond to the first one: "Want minimal syntactic sugar and a language that's not prone to feature-of-the-week hipsterism"

tormeh Feb 4, 2015 View on HN

Nice syntax and easily explained features are extremely important parts of programming language design. A really fancy new feature whose implementation compromises these qualities is usually a step backwards for the language as a whole. Look at C++.