You’re Creating a New Programming Language — What Will the Syntax Look Like?
I asked a bunch of programmers about their favorite syntax — here’s what they said
A little while ago I decided to have a little fun and wrote an article titled “My Favorite Pieces of Syntax in 8 Different Programming Languages.”
I published it and then decided to share it on a subreddit — r/ProgrammingLanguages. This led to an interesting discussion about programming language syntax, as users shared their own favorites.
It left me with no choice: I had to write a new article with my favorite pieces of syntax from the r/ProgrammingLanguages community.
A Compilation of Adored Syntax Across Programming Languages
Before we get into it, I should quickly clarify what this article is and what it isn’t.
❌ It isn’t a programming tutorial.
❌ It isn’t going to explain the snippets presented.
❌ It isn’t an objective list.
✅ It is meant for fun.
✅ It is a compilation of opinions from various people.
While it would be awesome to go in-depth into each of the snippets, there are just too many of them. In any case, I’m not familiar with all the languages mentioned.
As such, I’ll add a bit of the explanation from the user who posted it if one was available. However, you’re welcome to contribute on GitHub to this list, and more in-depth explanations are welcome there.
Finally, the reason for the title of this article is that many users in the subreddit actually have built or are building their own programming languages, and some have mentioned that they’re looking to include their favorite syntax from other languages in it.
Maybe you can draw inspiration from for your own programming language from this list.
Generator Expressions/ List Comprehensions
Posted by: u/ibrahimqasim and u/usernamecreationhell
Variable Unpacking and Multiple Assignment
Posted by: u/ibrahimqasim
‘With’ Blocks
Posted by: u/Beefster09
Do Notation
Posted By: u/superstar64
do notation is “syntactic sugar for combining monadic functions.”
List Comprehensions
Posted By: u/batllista101
Variable Unpacking and Multiple Assignment
Posted by: u/batllista101
Anonymous Functions
Posted By: u/Yul3n
OCaml has anonymous functions using the function keyword auto-trigger pattern matching so you can write something like this:
Bracketless Control Structures
Posted by: u/Yul3n
Control structures with a one-line body can have brackets omitted:
Array Destructuring
Posted by: u/That-Thou-Art
Variable/ Constant Declaration and Import Blocks
Posted by: u/almbfsek
Receiver Functions
Posted by: u/almbfsek
Case Classes
Posted by: u/Adriandmen
Flexible Call Syntax
Posted by: u/xigoi
Style Insensitivity
Posted by: u/xigoi
Pragmas
Posted by: u/xigoi
Pragmas removes the need for keywords like inline and you can easily define your own.
Result Variable
Posted by: u/xigoi
Every procedure automatically defines a variable called result, which is initialized to the default value and automatically returned at the end unless you explicitly return something else.
That’s it, thanks for reading!
Further Reading
Interested in learning about different programming languages?
Check out this tutorial about a powerful yet little-known programming language called Nim: “A Python Substitute? I Tried Out the Best Programming Language You’ve Never Heard Of”.
