The Linguistic Relativity of Programming Languages
summary
Argues that programming languages shape how problems are modeled and solved, claiming programmers adopt the constructs of the most powerful language they know; points to concrete tooling that lets JavaScript borrow features and idioms: underscore/lodash stabilizes higher-order helpers, Sweet.js brings macros, and transpilers/futures add generators and array comprehensions; shows libraries and source transforms are actually implemented and used so languages can be extended rather than merely described.
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chapters (19)
- 0:00Introduction
- 4:52Programming Languages and Thought
- 7:00Blob Paradox
- 7:21Blub
- 8:30Macros
- 9:03Programming Language
- 9:50Lisp
- 10:08An amended proposal
- 10:49Learning programming languages
- 11:54My personal experience
- 12:30Learning Python
- 13:35Language constructs
- 14:40Language design
- 15:53Tracer
- 16:27Synthetic vs Spoken
- 17:16Standardisation
- 18:13JavaScript
- 18:49JavaScript Growth
- 20:22What do we do
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