Daily Thought - 2024-05-08
Hey, I'm Hanno! These are my daily thoughts on Crosscut, the programming language I'm creating. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please get in touch!
This thought was published before Crosscut was called Crosscut! If it refers to "Caterpillar", that is the old name, just so you know.
I've been explaining and justifying why I'm using postfix operators in Caterpillar. I feel pretty good about this decision, but of course, it's not without trade-offs. First and foremost, postfix operators are unfamiliar, and will for that reason be off-putting to many. This can hurt adoption.
But I think there needs to be a balance. Diverging from established and familiar practices, provides the opportunity to create something better than what we already have. Which provides reasons for adoption in the first place.
And we have to keep in mind, Caterpillar is still very experimental, and no decision is permanent. If postfix operators turn out to be a huge mistake, I can redesign the syntax, while keeping the parts of the language and runtime that work. If specific features and use cases are hampered by postfix operators, it's possible to augment the language with prefix syntax where necessary.
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