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Programming Languages

The most popular blog posts about programming languages on Hacker News. 221 posts.

2016
121

How to implement a programming language in JavaScript

This is a tutorial on how to implement a programming language. If you ever wrote an interpreter or a compiler, then there is probably nothing new for you here. But, if you're using regexps to “parse” anything that looks like a programming language, then please read at least the section on parsing . Let's write less…

123

Tiny Lisp Computer

This article describes a self-contained computer with its own display and keyboard interface, based on an ATmega328, that you can program in Lisp. You can use it to run programs that interface to components such as LEDs and push-buttons via the I/O pins, read the analogue inputs, and operate external devices via the…

125

The Strict Aliasing Situation Is Pretty Bad

One thing that works well in practice in cases where you really don’t want to process single bytes at a time is to use a union for going from one type to another. Granted, writing one member of a union and reading from a different one also isn’t allowed per the standard, but every compiler I’ve come across allows it…

135

Playing with Syntax

One of the things I love about Lisp is that it gives you the ability to change and mold the syntax of the language to what you need. In this post I want to look at the evolution of a little macro I've been playing around with for a while now.

137

I missed Nim (2014)

A year ago I wrote an article trying to round up new languages since year 2000 and what I think of them by just… glancing at them, or otherwise playing with them. I ended up sifting out the 4 m…

147

The Evolution of a Haskell Programmer (2001)

Some time later, I came across Iavor’s "jokes" page, including a funny bit called “ The Evolution of a Programmer ” in which the traditional imperative "Hello, world" program is developed through several variations, from simple beginnings to a ridiculously complex extreme. A moment’s thought turned up the factorial…