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Growing a Language, by Guy Steele

Bill Pugh · talk · Watch on YouTube

Programming language designTech pioneers & interviews

What it is

Guy Steele's 1998 OOPSLA keynote on designing a programming language that its users can grow. He builds the talk using only one-syllable words and terms he has defined, to demonstrate the idea.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN considers it one of the best technical talks ever and cites it in discussions of language design, small cores and extensibility.

  • 11 people recommended it
  • 10 different months
  • 4 strong recommendations
  • first 2014, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “It's still one of the best technical talks I've ever come across.”

    Guy Steele on languages with a small core users can extend

    tikhonj, 2015-06 · Strong recommendation · in “The Tragedy of the Common Lisp, Or, Why Large Languages Explode”

  2. “Brilliant speech about how to grow languages and why it's necessary.”

    Why languages should be growable by the programmer

    gnaritas, 2017-08 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: What is your favorite CS paper?”

  3. “which is one of my absolute favorites”

    Fabulous talk that mentions Gabriel's paper title

    pfarrell, 2020-03 · Strong recommendation · in “Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big (1991)”

  4. “This is probably the best talk ever on the general topic”

    Best talk on language growth, including native numeric types and overloading

    kaba0, 2022-04 · Strong recommendation · in “Lies we tell ourselves to keep using Golang”

  5. “Interesting language exercise, definitely worth a watch!”

    Steele defines every word outside a given set before using it

    gramasaurous, 2015-11 · Recommendation · in “A Basic Guide for Curious Minds: Review of “Thing Explainer””

  6. “is worth a watch despite its age”

    Steele's take on Worse is Better and growing a language

    pixelmonkey, 2015-11 · Recommendation · in “For Better or for Worse”

  7. “This idea reminds me of an amazing talk by Guy Steele”

    Talk built from monosyllabic primitives and defined terms

    skystrife, 2016-04 · Recommendation · in “Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English”

  8. “I'd expect something like Guy Steele”

    Suggested as a classic missing from a best-of tech talks list

    e12e, 2018-09 · Recommendation · in “Show HN: TechYaks – Best of 50k tech talks ranked by confidence intervals”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: guy steele, growing a language, oopsla, language extensibility, lisp, java

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