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Comment by themusicgod1 | Hacker News Reader

> Don't make a programming language. You probably aren't the guy to do it. There is most likely exactly two people in this world in every generation qualified to do this well and you probably are not one of them.

Know how they got qualified to do this? By actually doing it, and by reading about others who were doing it. Modern language developers have so many shoulders of giants to sit on it's not even funny, but even so; it was only a generation ago that stuff like C didn't exist. Someone had to fill a need with a language.

Same goes for OS's/other stuff.

And sometimes, occasionally your stuff gets useful for other people -- and then they start correcting your mistakes. We are going to need one or two people who are that good at programming language design in 2039 and if it takes 24 years of putzing around and designing languages that don't work to get them there, all the power to them.

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No, making more languages is not a solution. If your language solves a problem that others cannot do as easily, great. The point is that even if you succeed on one level, you can create messes. One of the largest problems we have today in computer science is all the mess of poorly constructed languages. Just because something is widely used does not make it good, rather there are other realities like popularity contests, luck, press, etc. at work.

If you read my comment, you'd see that I didn't write no one should do it, just that there are only a few people that should. You can create your own language or DSL like thing in your spare time. Just don't spend thousands of hours on it and push it into the public. Without naming names, there are quite a few languages that we would be better off in many ways if they did not exist. Some of the authors of these languages have admitted as much and I am pretty sure they know better than both of us.

There's a difference between academic messing around vs. putting out something there with the presumption of knowledge. Making languages is a very hard thing. If you don't understand why this is true, you are probably one of these people that should not make a language. Sorry, but it does more harm than good 99% of the time. At best, the language gets ignored, at worst, it becomes popular enough in a half-baked state.

> Making languages is a very hard thing. If you don't understand why this is true, you are probably one of these people that should not make a language.

It is a very hard thing, which is precisely why we should be doing it. We do not do things because they are easy, but becuase they are hard, and because the practice makes us better at it. I have maintained a language for a living and I know what mess you're talking about. There are real systems out there that languages can be useful for, and even if you're right that the 99% of the time they cause more harm than good the 1% I would argue justifies the 99 failed attempts in practice.

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