Syntax design as a discipline (was Re: LFM + LFSP = LFE?)

[Shriram Krishnamurthi <address@hidden>]

Paul Prescod wrote:

> Here's an off-the-cuff suggestion. What if language design were split 
> into two totally different phases: the computer scientist and engineers 
> come up with new abstractions that they feel would have great benefits 
> in terms of performance, reliability, conciseness etc. Then they throw 
> the ideas over the wall to the syntax designers who figure out how to 
> present the idea to the masses through syntax, pedagogy etc.

A pretty good idea.  I've always hoped for more of this.

> Arguably this is already happening in the industry, just not 
> consciously. Lisp and Smalltalk are what the semantic desigers come up 
> with and Python, Java and Javascript are what the language designers 
> produce as a result. 

Would that this were true.  Other than syntax, I'd say these have done
pretty poorly at conveying the semantic designs (at least in their
initial iterations; yes, they're converging, but given their fairly ad
hoc starting points (Java excepted) I'd say it's a bit of revisionism
to present these languages in this fashion).  And the pedagogy has
been just as weak (even with the legions of people working on this
problem for Java, there is relatively little good stuff out there).

Shriram