How important is decidability in programming tools?

Hoisted from the drafts folder because the discovery that TypeScript's system is Turing-complete is making the rounds. It…

The world's most popular functional language, and what it teaches us

I realized today, when I read the phrasing of this LtU post , that my last two posts were too pessimistic about functional prog…

More on programming language adoption, from Meyerovich and Rabkin

A little bit of vindication from Meyerovich and Rabkin; a quote I found particularly interesting (emphasis added): A given prior…

Is education to blame for functional programming's minority status?

Rice University's Swarat Chaudhuri asks (and attempts to answer) the perennial question: why isn't functional programmin…

Why should Mozilla continue developing Rust?

The title of this post is not (entirely) rhetorical. I'm puzzled by Mozilla's decision to burn several of its full-time e…

On the verbosity of Java generics and related type systems

So, recently T. B. Lee tweeted : Java's generics syntax feels really clumsy. Are there other (strongly typed) languages that …

How to design a popular programming language

This has been kicking around in my brain for at least half a decade, and if you know me well then I've probably spoken it alo…

Computer science and the iPhone developer agreement

Full disclosure: I work for Google . However, this blog reflects my personal opinions only . Programming and computer science ar…