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What is a programming language?

may 15 '23 at 0:18 Solomon Ucko 151
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PLDI's current chat room

apr 26 '23 at 19:28 rydwolf 2,339
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Congratulations to Programming Language Design and Implementation on completing the Commitment phase!

apr 26 '23 at 18:03 Deko Revinio 112
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Should we allow questions about other parts of the software toolchain?

mar 20 '23 at 20:47 V2Blast 186
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Will questions about building and maintaining a programming language's community or contributors be allowed?

mar 8 '23 at 15:51 warren 7,721

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115 Example Questions (7 closed)

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up vote 1 down vote
added by Bubbler, edited by warren Dec 5 '22 at 15:57
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Relooper algorithms are used for decompiling code. While an important topic, it doesn't seem particularly relevant to programming language design. – curiousdannii Nov 19 '22 at 9:02
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@curiousdannii Relooper is relevant to compiling to wasm if the source language has gotos or other forms of control flow not supported by wasm. – Bubbler Nov 20 '22 at 1:38
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@curiousdannii area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32843/… – mousetail Nov 22 '22 at 6:51
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Even if that is the case, I'd prefer a question that asks it from the perspective of implementation. E.g. "How should I compile my goto into wasm?" – Nathan Merrill Dec 1 '22 at 19:57
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Hmm yeah, makes sense. I'll change it. – Bubbler Dec 1 '22 at 23:20
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added by James Risner Nov 24 '22 at 13:18
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A question like "why not" should probably be phrased more like "what are the downsides of", particularly in this case where many languages do make all strings immutable. – kaya3 Dec 1 '22 at 13:26
up vote 1 down vote
added by lyxal Dec 12 '22 at 6:33
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up vote 1 down vote
added by justANewbie Dec 17 '22 at 16:44
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By "handling big numbers", do you mean "having a built-in arbitrary-precision integer type"? Do you mean "having such a type exclusively, without also supporting concretely sized integer types"? Or just what? – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:39
@Anoymous I mean "having a built-in arbitrary-precision integer type", specifically more than 64 bits. – justANewbie Jan 13 '23 at 7:40
up vote 1 down vote
added by mathcat Jan 1 '23 at 10:25
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might be better as a looser questions, like the tradeoffs between types of strings and numbers? – cjquines Feb 5 '23 at 10:17
up vote 1 down vote
added by mousetail Jan 16 '23 at 10:12
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what do you mean by "eval"? – warren Jan 25 '23 at 17:33
Like the eval function in JS or python – mousetail Jan 25 '23 at 17:43
up vote 0 down vote
added by Seggan Nov 18 '22 at 2:40
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This seems a little too open-ended. Perhaps this could be split into questions about generating bytecode, reading bytecode, Java interop, etc.? – Original Original Original VI Nov 18 '22 at 16:59
Yeah now I agree. Will edit. – Seggan Nov 18 '22 at 17:01
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added by user3840170 Nov 19 '22 at 12:32
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added by user3840170 Nov 19 '22 at 12:37
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added by bigyihsuan Nov 19 '22 at 16:21
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added by Bubbler Nov 20 '22 at 22:39
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added by UndoneStudios Nov 21 '22 at 6:00
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added by James Risner Nov 24 '22 at 12:48
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Are they? Java's implementation of them might be unwieldy, but I've never heard criticism of the concept itself. – Unrelated String Nov 28 '22 at 4:02
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As far as I tell, the primary complaint that I see is that it's not uncommon to get in situations where a method is declaring multiple distinct checked exceptions, and that the frequency of handling them causes developers to frequently suppress them. Even then, I think an answer that says "Checked exceptions are poorly regarded because of Java, here's a better way to do them", would be a fine answer to this question. – Nathan Merrill Dec 1 '22 at 20:09
Perhaps it could be asked about Java in particular? – user3840170 Dec 19 '22 at 11:13
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added by James Risner Nov 24 '22 at 13:11
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This isn't a question. – Ray Butterworth Jan 12 '23 at 20:16
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It's phrased poorly, but it is a legitimate, if subjective, question about programming language design. Granted, I don't think we'd need a whole question about the "billion dollar mistake" either--it's a bit too straightforward... – Unrelated String Jan 15 '23 at 9:52
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added by Unrelated String Nov 28 '22 at 5:56
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added by user223163 Nov 30 '22 at 1:08
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added by Philipp Dec 2 '22 at 13:26
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added by warren Dec 5 '22 at 14:33
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added by warren Dec 5 '22 at 15:58
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inspired by: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/127456/… – warren Dec 5 '22 at 15:59
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added by NaCl Dec 14 '22 at 18:39
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This sounds like a sort of reference question that should be asked by someone capable of self-answering. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:35
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added by NaCl Dec 14 '22 at 18:42
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added by NaCl Dec 14 '22 at 18:44
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This seems much too vague and unfocused to be answerable. Which optimizations would you be considering? – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:58
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added by NaCl Dec 14 '22 at 18:47
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added by brendanzab Dec 15 '22 at 9:20
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added by ice1000 Dec 15 '22 at 19:20
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added by ice1000 Dec 15 '22 at 19:24
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added by justANewbie Dec 17 '22 at 16:53
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English grammar demands noun phrases here; adjectival phrases don't nominalize implicitly. So: "... strong typing vs weak typing?" Alternately: "strongly typed vs weakly typed languages?", allowing the adjectival phrases to modify something. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:34
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added by Thisaru Guruge Jan 4 '23 at 12:35
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added by alephalpha Jan 9 '23 at 8:35
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added by Jan 12 '23 at 19:29
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added by Jan 12 '23 at 19:56
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added by Logan Devine Jan 15 '23 at 1:22
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added by stackprotector Jan 16 '23 at 18:10
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added by warren Jan 25 '23 at 17:32
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I can't say this is clearly out of scope, but I wouldn't call it a good question. Line numbers are transparently an artifact of punch cards, unstructured programming, and primitive editors; it's hard to imagine why they would stick around. – Unrelated String Jan 26 '23 at 3:48
1  
@UnrelatedString - if this proposal is about implementation, too (per the name and description), implementing a classic language could be of interest :) – warren Jan 27 '23 at 14:08
up vote 0 down vote
added by warren Jan 27 '23 at 14:09
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inspired by area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/127456/… – warren Jan 27 '23 at 14:09
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added by Jacob Jan 27 '23 at 17:48
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added by mathcat Feb 5 '23 at 10:43
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up vote -1 down vote
added by Original Original Original VI Nov 18 '22 at 1:23
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up vote -1 down vote
added by Lev Knoblock Nov 18 '22 at 2:59
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1  
Is this about parsing a source change into an AST change? That’s typically called “incremental parsing”. “Iterative parsing” as a term of art seems to either contrast with “recursive parsing”, or refer to parsing in multiple, increasingly specific passes. – Jon Purdy Nov 18 '22 at 17:44
up vote -1 down vote
added by Adám, edited by warren Dec 5 '22 at 16:53
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1  
I think fundamentally, this is a good question, but I'd prefer "storing" over "dealing with", as "dealing" is a bit vague. – Nathan Merrill Dec 1 '22 at 19:59
@NathanMerrill I intended to include things like slicing, indexing, counting, etc. – Adám Dec 1 '22 at 22:00
1  
"How can unicode text data be indexed?" would be a more specific question. Slicing is just indexing twice, and counting is somewhat implied since the number of characters is equal to the last index plus one (though "how can I count characters in Unicode text data?" might work as a separate question). – kaya3 Dec 2 '22 at 13:39
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@Adám - made a tweak so it's more inline with what you're proposing – warren Dec 5 '22 at 16:54
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I think there would rather be a question about what gotchas exist in dealing with Unicode (which could be answered by highlighting topics like collation, characters composed of multiple code points etc.), and then separate questions about how to deal with each of those. – Anonymous Jan 12 '23 at 19:38
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