Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Meta

Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

Post History

75%
+4 −0
Meta Are questions about language design on-topic?

The ambition of this site was always to give more room for subjective and big picture questions compared with Someplace Else. However, I believe programming language design falls under the topic of...

posted 1y ago by Lundin‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Lundin‭ · 2022-11-29T14:51:15Z (over 1 year ago)
The ambition of this site was always to give more room for subjective and big picture questions compared with Someplace Else. However, I believe programming language design falls under the topic of general computer science. It doesn't match anything in the current [on-topic list](https://software.codidact.com/help/on-topic). 

General computing/programming-related big picture questions posted here in the past had mixed reception. Some got a lot of up-votes, some got a lot of down-votes. So it seems to depend a lot on how good and well-researched the question is.

For example, I don't think a question such as "What are the advantages of compiling versus interpreting?" will be well-received. It's a very broad question and an answer would have to be quite lengthy in order to be fulfilling. Also there's the in-between scenario of byte code, which is used by languages like Java and has evolved over the years. An answer would have to dip into that as well, because simply staying at "compiled vs interpreted" sounds a bit like various long-since outdated discussions from the 1990s comparing C++ with Visual Basic (and the end goal was always a rant over how bad VB was :) ).

Generally, I'd hesitantly say that questions about program language design would be welcome, but they must be carefully phrased. Particularly:

- Does this question list all the relevant requirements of the programming language getting created? Or is it yet another "what is best" question without a "best" criteria?

- Is this a question someone can answer without writing a whole essay?
- Is this a question I can somewhat easily research myself online or by reading a book on the topic. 

  In my past experience of similar questions, a lot were met with the standard comment of "go read the [Dragon Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniques,_and_Tools)". Except few who recommend it has actually read it... I haven't read it myself, so I have no idea how good it is.

  I think we would welcome questions from people who have done that level of research and answers from people who knows even more. It would sort under "hard to answer niche questions" but that alone doesn't make something off-topic.