u/GeorgeneKeckqkumbrin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Recommends
Brian Kernighan on successful language design
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#briankernighan#awk#languagedesign
Computer Science - Brian Kernighan on successful language design
University of Nottingham
129K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway
- Recommended by 7 people: 3 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 3 in engineering communities.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2015 to 2023.
- Presented by Brian Kernighan, Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University
Beginner. No background in the topic needed.
332K views10 years ago7 recommendations
Programming languagesHistory and cultureLanguage design and type systemsPeople who shaped computingHistory of computing
Brian Kernighan shares insights on how to succeed in programming language design, drawing on his experience with AWK and other languages.
Professor Brian Kernighan presents on 'How to succeed in language design without really trying.' Brian Kernighan is Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University and Honorary Professor in the School of Computer Science at The University of Nottingham. View the presentation slides here: uniofnottm-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/d_storey_notting… For more videos featuring Brian visit: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzH6n4zXuckqZ90zLyy36qjO5YIn1RulG Visit the School of Computer Science's website: nottingham.ac.uk/computerscience/index.aspxWhy it's here
7 people recommend thisWhat people say. Highly recommended as an excellent and entertaining lecture on the history and principles of successful programming language design.
u/hou32houin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Recommends
Brian Kernighan on successful language design
teleforceon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Most(LY Dead) Influential Programming Languages (2020)”
This is an excellent talk on designing successful programming language by Brian Kernighan 1. In the beginning of the lecture he did show a picture of the Tower of Babel depicting plethora programming languages as it's appeared in the cover of Communications of the ACM (CACM) magazine in January 1961 and most of the programming languages mentioned in the article were already there! 1 Brian Kernighan on successful language design: link to this video
u/NeechooThe resident Python guyin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Recommends
Brian Kernighan (AWK, AMPL, Unix co-developer) on successful language design
chrisfinazzoon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Shell Style Guide”
There's a great talk by bwk where he complains about exactly this kind of behavior...before admitting that anything useful in a language will be abused in order to do silly things. link to this video I'll admit, I'm no fan of Python, but this has little to do with the language itself. I found Bash and Ruby first, so Python just seems like too much work to get right. Requisite xkcd: link
ad404b8a372f2b9on Hacker News • Recommends
On “Most(LY Dead) Influential Programming Languages (2020)”
All talks by Bret Victor are great, they are listed on his websites but they are more concerned with the future of programming than old languages: link On the topic of language design, there is also this talk by Brian Kernighan which gives good practical advice if you're building a language and talks about his journey with awk: link to this video
u/tobegain r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions
On “How differently is designing a DSL from designing a PL?”
Well, in a DSL you really just have to focus on creating the best notation for the job that needs to be done. You don't need to be turing complete, necessarily, although beware that you will almost inevitably, perhaps by accident, end up in the "turing tarpit" as you add more features.
I can recommend Brian Kernighan's excellent talk on language design
u/tobegain r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions
On “Aesthetics of PL design”
I found Brian Kernighan's talk interesting [video
I also wrote a blog post that is about different ways to implement the necessary concepts, I feel I touched on aesthetics https://tobega.blogspot.com/2024/01/usability-in-programming-language.html
u/tobegain r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions
On “Are there any books/resources on language design (as opposed to implementation)”
There is a great talk by Brian Kernighan who has designed a number of successful languages, [video
Kenneth Iverson's ideas on the subject are interesting https://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/\~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pdf In APL like languages tit has been said that there are adverbs to modify the verbs (-ish), which fascinates me.
The philosophies behind Perl and Raku are also interesting especially since they were designed by a linguist. Perl was based on the idea of "there is more than one way to do it", which was great when writing things quickly, but horrible when trying to maintain a program over time, so successful design in one way, complete failure in another. This follows also in S…
bjwbellon Hacker News • Mentions
On “The Macro”
Brian Kernighan's recent lecture on language design, link to this video , is an example (not sure if it was on hacker news). I'm working on SIMD in Go and don't want to make avoidable mistakes.
ruraljuroron Hacker News • Mentions
On “Ask HN: What are the best references on language design”
Brian Kernighan's talk on How to succeed in language design without really trying 1 was referenced in his recent interview on the software engineering daily podcast.2 1 link to this video 2 link
troydjon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Awk vs. Perl (2009)”
I learned Awk in 1988 before Perl was around (on our systems, anyway). It was super useful at the time. But if you know Perl and Perl is available on your system, there's certainly not a compelling need for writing standalone, multi-line Awk programs. But Awk is really, really useful for one-liners. As Larry Wall has said: "I still say awk '{print $1}' a lot." Brian Kernighan himself, in this 2015 talk 1 on language design, states that Awk was primarily intended for one-liner usage (he mentions this at 20:43). 1 link to this video
readabledotredon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Getting started with Readable Human Format”
Red is not about writing a parser for html, it's about creating DSL. As Brian Kernighan: said "Domain Specific Languages are smaller and simpler than mainstream general purpose #programming languages. That's pretty raisonnable. Thinking of building the next version of C++ not so reasonnable." link to this video
troydjon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Unix: A History and a Memoir, by Brian Kernighan”
…buck of any language--one can learn much of it in 5 or 10 minutes, and typical programs are only a few lines long" p. 116, UNIX: A History and Memoir. Also keep in mind Larry Wall's (inventor of Perl) famous quote/signature line: "I still say awk '{print $1}' a lot." More background on awk from Brian Kernighan in a 2015 talk on language design: link to this video…
u/oh5nxoin r/C_Programming • Mentions
On “I need to replace strings in a text file the special way”
The old lecture about language design, by Mr Kernighan, to choose C or choose awk:
3 minutes into link to this video