Tuesday, July 12, 2016

[lijlbmvi] Features for a generated language

What features of a computer language make things convenient for tools which generate output in that language?  (As opposed to make things convenient for humans programming in that language.)

Lack of forced indentation.  Identifiers of arbitrary length.  Lines of arbitrary length.  Ability to create fresh namespaces whose names which are guaranteed not to collide other names already in scope.  Function definitions do not need to be topologically sorted, and may be mutually recursive.

Inspired by languages which compile down to C or C++.

Continues a UI idea that UIs should be usable by both humans and machines.

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