Developer Voices

A language’s AST—it’s abstract syntax tree—is nearly always a hidden implementation detail. It’s not treated as part of the language, but merely the intermediate step between parsing and compiling. But this week’s guest aims to flip that relationship on its head...
Peter Saxton joins me to talk about EYG - an AST-first language that defines the fundamental capabilities first, and then stretches out from there to surface syntax and final execution.
The result is something that can teach us a lot about how a typed, functional programming language works; how an extensible effects system works; and could make writing a new programming language as easy as defining the syntax you want, and parsing that into EYG's AST.
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EYG Homepage: https://github.com/crowdhailer/eyg-lang

TinyGo: https://tinygo.org/

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DuckDB’s become a favourite data-handling tool of mine, simply because it does so many small things well. It can read and write a huge number of data formats; it can infer schemas automatically when you just want to move quickly; and it can interface with most languages, run like lightning on the desktop or be embedded into a webpage. I’m a huge fan.

But I’m not nearly as knowledgeable as this week’s two fans, Simon Aubury and Ned Letcher, who’ve just written a book on all the many ways you can use DuckDB and all the hidden tricks and tips that help you make the most of this. So in this episode we’re taking a practical look at DuckDB, what problems it can solve at work, and how to start getting the most out of it.

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Getting Started with DuckDB (book): https://packt.link/byKYt

DuckDB episode with Hannes Mühleisen: https://youtu.be/pZV9FvdKmLc

DuckDB: https://duckdb.org/

dplyr, the data-manipulation language: https://dplyr.tidyverse.org/

duckplyr, DuckDB’s ‘native’ version: https://github.com/duckdblabs/duckplyr

Substrait: https://substrait.io/

Observable (Markdown+DuckDB=Reports): https://observablehq.com/framework/

DuckDB’s “friendly” SQL: https://duckdb.org/docs/sql/dialect/friendly_sql.html

Community Extensions: https://community-extensions.duckdb.org/

DuckCon #5: https://duckdb.org/2024/08/15/duckcon5.html

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The ZigLang team have put an astonishing amount of effort into making Zig work an effective tool for compiling C across different architectures. Work that benefits the Zig language, but also has a chance to benefit languages like Python and Rust. Or indeed, any language that uses native C libraries somewhere in its stack.

So this week we’re joined by Loris Cro of the Zig team to dive into how you make a reliable, cross-platform toolchain that can compile C anywhere it finds it. And in doing so,

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Zig Homepage: https://ziglang.org/

Zig on Github: https://github.com/ziglang/zig

MingW for Windows: https://www.mingw-w64.org/

All Your Codebase: https://allyourcodebase.com/

Ziglang on PyPi: https://pypi.org/project/ziglang/

Shout out to Whitequark: https://pypi.org/user/whitequark/

Darling: https://www.darlinghq.org/

WineHQ: https://www.winehq.org/

PyPi Stats: https://pypistats.org/packages/__all__

The Zine static site generator: https://zine-ssg.io/

The Zine source code: https://github.com/kristoff-it/zine

Loris’ website: https://kristoff.it/

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Back in 2012, José Valim started building Elixir to as a way to have his ideal programming language running on the same platform as Erlang. Fast-forward 12 years and it’s become build anything from distributed infrastructure to notebooks and websites.

In this week’s Developer Voices, José joins us to tell the history of Elixir in a series of design choices. Which features mattered to him in the early days, and which ones excite him most now. What’s going on under the hood to make Elixir tick, and what does its future hold?

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Elixir Homepage: https://elixir-lang.org/

Elixir Docs: https://elixir-lang.org/docs.html

Numerical Elixir: https://github.com/elixir-nx

Phoenix: https://phoenixframework.org/

Livebook: https://livebook.dev/

José’s Livebook & Elixir Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pas9WdWIBHs

Comparing Elixir & Erlang Variables: https://dashbit.co/blog/comparing-elixir-and-erlang-variables

Gleam on the BEAM: https://youtu.be/RntfkL8lUY4

José on Github: https://github.com/josevalim

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Given how many languages have been written in C over the years, it’s not surprising to see new languages being written in Rust. What is surprising about this week’s guest is the domain he’s writing for: Computer Aided Design (CAD). Could Rust be sneaking its way into the CAD world too?

Joining me to discuss the design and implementation of a CAD programming language is Adam Chalmers. He works at Zoo, developing KCL - a language that looks like JavaScript, runs on Rust, and offers users a seamless hybrid experience of both coding and point-and-click modelling. So, how does that all fit together?

In this episode we look at the design and implementation of a programming language in Rust; how KittyCAD creates that hybrid environment for text-based programming and point-and-click modelling; and how we can learn to write our own Rust-interpreted languages.

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Adam’s Blog: https://adamchalmers.com/

Adam’s Guide To Writing Parsers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF3kMyzMC40

Zoo’s Modelling App: https://zoo.dev/modeling-app

Mechanical CAD: https://zoo.dev/blog/mechanical-cad-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow

A Lego brick in KCL: https://zoo.dev/docs/kcl-samples/lego

Winnow: https://docs.rs/winnow/latest/winnow/

Nom: https://docs.rs/nom/latest/nom/

Factorio: https://www.factorio.com/

Satisfactory: https://store.steampowered.com/app/526870/Satisfactory/

Crafting Interpreters: https://craftinginterpreters.com/

Coding in Antarctica: https://brr.fyi/

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