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Three Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Languages

InfoQ

234K subscribers • 64 videos on Hallway • Conference channel

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  • Recommended by 3 people: 3 in engineering communities.
  • Presented by Peter Alvaro

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

14K views7 years ago3 recommendations

Programming languagesDistributed systemsLanguage design and type systemsReplication and consistency

Peter Alvaro shares lessons learned from designing languages for distributed systems, focusing on syntax, semantics, and query fragments.

QCon San Francisco, the international software conference, returns November 17-21, 2025. Join senior software practitioners from early adopter companies as they share real-world insights and actionable advice to help you adopt the right technologies and practices. Gain exposure to innovative approaches and fresh ideas in software development and engineering, designed to inspire and challenge you. Don’t miss this chance to deepen your knowledge, sharpen your skills, and stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of technology. Register now: bit.ly/3BYzfbe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Video with transcript included: bit.ly/2KwbcFl Peter Alvaro talks about the reasons one should engage in language design and why many of us would (or should) do something so perverse as to design a language that no one will ever use. He shares some of the extreme and sometimes obnoxious opinions that guided his design process. This presentation was recorded at QCon San Francisco 2018: bit.ly/2uYyHLb The next QCon is Qcon.ai San Francisco 2019 - April 16-17, 2019: bit.ly/2piRtLl For more awesome presentations on innovator and early adopter topics check InfoQ’s selection of talks from conferences worldwide bit.ly/2tm9loz #Development #LanguageDesign #CaseStudy #InfoQ #QConSanFrancisco

Why it's here

3 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for its insights on language design, syntax complexity, and the consequences of language features.

u/jediknightin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Recommends

On “I need to write a database query language. I have a blank sheet of paper.”

Have a look at this presentation. There is a lovely part about query fragments and the consequences of the set supported by the language.
3View on Reddit

u/tommiecc36in r/ProgrammingLanguages • Recommends

On “Programming language features”

…guage I all ways got hung up on "is my syntax unique enough", "no my language is too close to x language", "oh no this has already been done before", "what is this even useful". If you, like I did, get hung up on these ideas you'll end up creating a syntax that is complex and convoluted. I recommend watching at least the first third of this talk: [video I found it very helpful.…
3View on Reddit

u/arobie1992in r/ProgrammingLanguages • Recommends

On “Why is Python not considered pure OO according to Wikipedia?”

Re your last point, it reminded me some of this talk I watched the other day: [video He gets into it a little later when he starts talking about distributed systems; don't have an exact time stamp. I don't think it's quite what you're talking about, but hopefully it might be in the same ballpark.
2View on Reddit