Learning a programming language can be a daunting task but it can also be an interesting and rewarding journey. When entering into contact with a new language for the first time it is easy to focus on the syntax for the usual conditional and looping constructs as well as variable and function declaration. It should be noted that a programming language syntax is indeed the result of several design principles when building the language. This stands in contrast to spoken and written languages that evolved naturally over the course of millions of years of use.
Programming languages are the result of work from a small number of heavily invested and opinionated people. When discussing this topic, the Zen of Python comes to mind. The Zen of Python summarizes Python’s guiding language design principles.
Some modern programming languages openly share these design principles to foster a community of like-minded individuals that agree with these on a fundamental level. Take for example the Go programming language. The guiding principles of Go are described in the Go documentation FAQ by the Go Authors.
When Go was designed, Java and C++ were the most commonly used languages for writing servers, at least at Google. We felt that these languages required too much bookkeeping and repetition. Some programmers reacted by moving towards more dynamic, fluid languages like Python, at the cost of efficiency and type safety. We felt it should be possible to have the efficiency, the safety, and the fluidity in a single language.
This sentence explains the goal of the language as well as its purpose. It also helps a developer to understand how idiomatic code could be written. Idiomatic code is obtained by following the language idioms and therefore the subjacent language design principles.
The Rust Project Developers also share a few general guidelines that define the Rust language design philosophy:
- Memory safety must never be compromised
- Abstraction should be zero-cost, while still maintaining safety
- Praticality is key
Memory safety and abstraction are big problems. Developers can relate with this. A community can be created naturally around these.
It turns out that, strong opinionated philosophies are a requirement for fundamentally sound design.
It turns out that, programming is more than syntax.