PEDRO CATTORI

When working on a new programming language, start with a tree-like abstract syntax (ala Lisp). That lets you immediately get to work on the interesting semantics of your language. Only after that have you earned the right to layer on syntax.

Syntax is a view.

You can even add multiple syntaxes as “views” on top your abstract syntax.

complexity bad

say again:

complexity very bad

you say now:

complexity very, very bad

The right place to talk about optionality is not where the types are defined, but where they are used.

Different functions will have different requirements for what parts of a type they need and which parts they don’t.

Keep the happy path front-and-center without sacrificing error handling.

Fixed deadline, flexible scope.

Commit to an idea for a couple weeks, then course correct.

Naming things creates abstractions. Do you really want to create an abstraction every single time you want to style an element?

Instead, use the same approach for avoiding abstraction in code: inline it!

Code duplication isn’t inherently bad. Sometimes its more likely for code to diverge later, so don’t force it to be the same.