Languages for Engineering, not for Coding

There are two kinds of programming languages.

Languages for coding are like C, Python, and JavaScript.

A human writes code.

Then the language tooling comes in. The code is then compiled, ahead of time or Just in Time, or maybe it’s not compiled but interpreted instead. Then it’s executed. End of story.

Why did the human write the code? Is it the code that the human wanted to write? How is the code documented?

I don’t think coding is enough, and modern languages don’t stop on this.

Take a look at TypeScript which AST has nodes for JSDoc comments.

TypeScript cares about your comments because they need to appear in tooltips. It cares about what happens in the IDE, and other humans reading your TypeScript.

Even more modern, Unison goes a few steps forwards and treats docs as first-class citizens with documentation literals. Test tooling is also a built-in in Unison, with test watch expressions; but this isn’t really new, Rust’s mod tests attribute and cargo test brought the in-file unit tests to the mainstream.

I expect the holistic approach and a widening of an “interest area” of programming languages to grow more popular in time. What do you think? Disagree on Twitter.