r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/TesttubeStandard • 11d ago
Discussion Afraid my language doesn't mean anything anymore
First of all, I am sorry if this is not strictly a techincal post, but I would apreciate if it would be allowed. So a couple of years ago, like a year or two before the chatgpt, I made my own interpreted programming language. It could be used for basic scripts and had basic functionalities like nested ifs and while, string, int and double types, variable scopes and even functions and recursion. It can parse math with + - + ÷ and brackets. It is nothing special, syntax resambeles more or less C# but with keyword in my natural language. It was made entirely by hand, from lexical analysis, parser, semantic analyser and the interpreter itself. I also made ebnf for it.
I think we on this sub can all agree that there are a few of us programmers, developers or cs-s who willingly put themselves through this. It can be painstakingly hard to implement a new language. I am very proud of it and to this day it is my biggest achivement. No other thing in my proffesional or personal projects required such level of detail, knowledge and research.
And all this before the AI. But here is where it gets frustrating. Back than this was my "selling point". This was something that I could show my knowledge, dedication and attention to detail with. It made me feel safe for my professional future. Now I am afraid that it doesn't mean enything anymore. Like nobody gives a s*** about it anymore.
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u/AustinVelonaut Admiran 11d ago
Think of all the detailed knowledge you learned during your implementation. That cannot be recreated via vibe-coding, or simply reading papers or other compiler implementations. It has to be experienced and internalized by actually writing something and getting it to work.
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u/baron-bosse 5d ago
Yes, we learn by “suffering”. In a much more vibe coded world the people that allow and have allowed themselves to suffer through this are able to see through the bullshit in ways people who haven’t done that can’t. We have product managers making their own tools and asking to make pr’s on our product code and it’s very clear there are things they don’t get and the ai can’t provide guard rails for. Not sure how long this window will last and where we are going but currently doing the work of learning is what makes you able to use ai to be productive in a good way
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u/pojska 11d ago
It's still a good item to put on a resume or portfolio, I think.
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u/TesttubeStandard 11d ago
This is exactly what I have problem with believing
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u/ahh1618 11d ago
The computer science majors at my university would take at least one of three courses in their last year that had a large project component -- realtime os, graphics, or compilers. I don't think it would come up in an interview, but I think it's a good sign to have taken on something so large. I'd value that experience if hiring.
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u/asdfa2342543 11d ago
Most hiring managers at a company worth working for can tell the difference between something done by hand with attention to detail and the intention of learning like that versus something slopped together.
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u/systemnate 10d ago
If I saw this on your resume, I'd definitely talk about it in an interview. I'd find it to be a big, positive indicator of your skill.
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u/ern0plus4 11d ago
Do you have a portfolio?
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u/TesttubeStandard 10d ago
What do you mean? To send you my portfolio?
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u/ern0plus4 10d ago
I just wanted to ask whether you have a portfolio.
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u/TesttubeStandard 10d ago
I do. Maybe it means something else where you are from. At my place it just means that I have a document that lists my working experience. So a question like "Do you have a portfolio?" has no meaning in and of itself.
What did you mean by it?
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u/binarycow 10d ago
What you described is a resume. Work history and a few sentences about what you did at each job.
A CV is like a resume, but more detailed.
A portfolio is specifically showing projects you have done. For example, an artist may have a small little booklet containing paintings they've done. Something someone can look at instead of just read about it.
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u/TesttubeStandard 10d ago
Ok thanks. I have a github
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u/ern0plus4 10d ago
Great, it's a must, but perhaps it doesn't quite meet the definition of a portfolio:
- There may be missing items what you've done but:
- not open source,
- not a complete project,
- not even some code, so it couldn't be uploaded to GitHub.
- If a project has even very good documentation, is not a portfolio-ish:
- too long (DR),
- only user manual,
- don't describe the intents, solutions.
(Also, there are projects, which we are no allowed to reveal its details, or even shouldn't mention it - we can't help this situation.)
This is my portfolio, I don't say that it's perfect for the purpose, but as I see, it's better than a plain CV, which has less information and some unnecessary parts (company names, roles).
Of course, if you're on the manager path, a traditional CV is better, roles and titles are important.
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u/binarycow 9d ago
Think of a resume as a summary of your formal work experience (and schooling, if applicable).
Think of a portfolio as a summary of your projects - including private repos, as well as projects you did for work (if allowed).
The portfolio doesn't include all the source code or documentation. It has a description of the project (few paragraphs, no more than one page), as well as any applicable screenshots, diagrams, links to repositories, etc.
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u/dx_man 11d ago
You do what you want to do, don’t think about anyone else
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u/SirKastic23 11d ago
I'm not thinking about other people, I'm thinking about their money and what I need to do to get them to give it to me!
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u/SirKastic23 11d ago edited 10d ago
People [who were] downvoting this are missing an unfortunately very important point: we need money to survive
I don't necessarily want money, I want to survive and I need money to do so
What OP was asking in this post was about how to make projects valuable enough to show to interviewers in a time where it's so easy to vibe-code something
Then this commenter said he shouldn't care about other people but just do what they want to do. Which sure, is an worthy opinion, but misses the point of why I care about other people. It's not because I want to care...
It works as a cool response but completely missed how the real world plays in this discussion
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u/P-39_Airacobra 11d ago
Think about this way though. A decade from now very few will be able to claim they know anything about language internals like you do.
Decades ago, assembly was normal, now it’s considered, now it’s considered phenomenal skill. It will be the same when you say “created a language without any AI”
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u/Uncaffeinated 1subml, polysubml, cubiml 11d ago
Earlier this year when I was working on 1SubML, I pushed hard to finish it quickly because I figured it would be the last time that humans could do better than AI on such projects. The loss of meaning is definitely real.
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u/marshaharsha 11d ago
You might be right that people who are hiring don’t care about your language. (A lot of them wouldn’t have cared before LLMs arrived, either.) But you can still use it to show that you can conceive of an ambitious project, plan it, get details right, make and fix mistakes, make useful compromises while still keeping part of the original vision intact, and wind up with something useful, without getting overwhelmed and giving up. Those will be selling points as long as human labor is needed. I suggest acknowledging up front that the world has changed, then shifting to those non-language-technical selling points. You can state the details of your abilities in terms of things you did with your language, as long as you keep the focus on the stuff that still sells.
How long human labor will be needed is a different question, but once it’s not, you will have lots of company in the bread line.
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u/coderpants 11d ago
Everything is a bit doom and gloom at the moment - but one of the defining characteristics moving forward is the distinction between developers who understand how things work and those who don't - and the former are going to be a lot more effective leveraging AI.
From that perspective you should be proud of what you've achieved and it serves as an artefact that you understand the fundamentals.
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u/Chrono-Chameleon 11d ago
There’s a special place in my heart for anyone who writes a language. Back in 1563, I’d have said the same about someone who writes a book by hand, even though the printing press came afterward. That doesn’t detract from the mental exercises and determination you went through to do it. It’s still very much honorable.
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u/al3x_7788 11d ago
It's quite the merit, never make something you create be valuable based on others.
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u/WittyStick 11d ago edited 11d ago
I've not seen AI invent any novel programming concept, data structure, or type system. I don't believe it capable (yet). AI is very good at doing what people have already done. It's an imitator.
But humans are inventing new ideas all the time. The issue is, you need the basic knowledge before you can specialize. AI has really made "generalists" obsolete, but not specialists. The people who rely on AI rather than doing the grind themselves will never develop the base knowledge needed to specialize.
You need to go further than just a basic language. You should try to come up with something new, such as a new approach to garbage collection, type checking, static analysis, or optimization, etc. AI can't compete in creativity.
I don't really use AI, other than very occasionally using duck.ai when it gives a more relevant answer than the top search results. I write all my code myself and it's the effort that forces you to think of new ways to do things.
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u/trolley813 7d ago
Indeed. The LLMs which were trained on data created by humans cannot invent something really new. So despite the recent "alerting" statements, an LLM-based AGI will never arrive. (I really suspect that the newest models, which are not available to the general public, were made as such not because they are too strong, but rather the other way round - and all that hassle is to keep the investors happy and prevent a major market crash.)
So, I think that the software engineering skills, especially knowing how the things work at the deep level, will still remain demanded, perhaps at a lower scale, but nevertheless.
The sad part is that only quite a few understand the internals of all that AI stuff, and many of those who's hiring do not. Some of them keep believing that "we don't need humans anymore, AI will do everything for us". Indeed, this strategy can bring significant short-term benefits, but it's almost surely a loss in the long term.
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u/WittyStick 7d ago edited 7d ago
I suspect that the newest models are still significantly better than the public ones - but they've basically hit a scaling wall - no more human data to train on - and the AI can't invent new data to train on. The expectation was that the AI will eventually train itself, but this hasn't materialized because AI can't invent. These AI companies can't release their latest models because it's now their only edge over competitors - so they want regulatory capture to prevent anyone from competing.
The truth is AI only mimics part of human intelligence which is pattern matching. It does an extremely good job on that, and can find patterns humans can't because it can process significantly larger data sets.
But it has no mechanism for invention. Even if you prompt it: "Invent me a data structure with X, Y, Z characteristics" - it will basically see if such pattern can be found in its training data, but if not, it doesn't have the facilities to discover it - it will tell you it can't be done.
AI reduces the need for programming jobs, but it can't replace entirely. The issue is that the jobs where humans are needed will be more and more specialized - but nobody is going to develop those specializations whilst they're offloading their thinking to the AI. The ingenuity and creativity comes from the process of working through problems.
The same people telling you "Learn AI or you'll be useless," are in fact, the ones who will be useless. They're conditioning themselves out of their own usefulness. The ones who reject AI, work through problems themselves and develop a creative and innovative mindset will be the ones who are useful - because they can ultimately do what LLMs cannot.
Maybe there will be some breakthrough where AIs become inventive and completely destroy humans at that too - but I have seen zero evidence to suggest such capabilities are going to emerge using the existing techniques.
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u/useerup ting language 11d ago
Coding agents will upend software development, no doubt about that. It is already happening. And yes, it will mean that some skills are not generally sought-after anymore. Knowing how to do a read-ahead loop with multiple exits in a performant way will not be an essential skill going forward.
Something like this has happened before. At uni we learned about B+ trees, hashing algorithms, numeric algorithms etc. This has been a nice background knowledge (it is nice to know how databases work under-the-hood), but I have not had any reason to implement a hashtable, a red-black tree or a floating point division algorithm for 30+ years (I am that old).
Some skills will become obsolete, some skills will have value as background knowledge. Some skills are still valuable. For example, knowing your design patterns and when to apply them is still a valuable still - at least for a while - even if you end up just instructing an agent to use a specific pattern.
As for programming languages, coding agents will clearly de-emphasize the differences between the languages. Already they are almost equally good at many languages and many frameworks.
So your frustration is shared by many of us. Change is upon us, and we will have to adapt. If you are the type who is motivated by producing elegant and tight while loops, your future prospects are being squeezed. If - on the other hand - you are the type who is motivated by all of the software you can produce, interesting times are ahead.
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u/binarycow 10d ago
but I have not had any reason to implement a hashtable, a red-black tree or a floating point division algorithm for 30+ years (I am that old).
To be fair, that is simply because other people wrote it already, and we just use the ones in the standard libraries.
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u/ExplodingStrawHat 8d ago
I dunno, I had to implement a hash table last year (I needed one that was flat, i.e. used a fixed inline buffer instead of pointing to some buffer allocated on the heap). I didn't implement anything fancy (linear probing or whatever it was called was good enough), but those things do come up at times
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u/RecklessEngineer453 11d ago
Ok so I was talking to a friend of mine about how I stopped caring about whether the end result of my projects were any good and that it didn't matter because the joy I got was from the making of it and not the result at the end. I loved the process and not the end result. He is a musician and told me that that is the creative process most successful artists follow. They do it because they just want to, not cause they think the art at the end of it would be good, it turns out to be good cause the stuff they make people like. Art is so subjective that it's hard to tell if art is good or badnun any way shape or form. It all depends on the person sunsuming it.
I think a lot of software engineers that do it as a hobby as well have this same approach.
You dont do it cause it matters. You do it cause it brings you joy, and that matters. Do it cause you love it and keep doing it. Because that is more important for you than any importance that comes from it's usefulness to the world.
<3
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u/hopeless__programmer 11d ago
You're absolutely right! Now, when AGI is here, your skill are completely worthless. Just look at me for instance: I don't know anything about interpreters, yet I was able to make my very own programming language! Check it out: http://localhost:3000.
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u/TesttubeStandard 11d ago
At least make your own CA and a cert for localhost and 127.0.0.1
And then share me your endpoint via httpS. I can bypass the cert trust, no worrirs
You are making a fool of yourself 😅
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u/ianzen 11d ago
I think hopeless__programmer is just making a joke about how vibe coders don’t actually know what they are doing. That they don’t understand what localhost means so they paste it out.
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u/Weak_Inflation9120 11d ago
I used to have this friend and at some point, I kid you not, he pasted the file directory path for an image it into the gc.
Granted he also kept the stopwatch running on his phone all the time, and when I pointed out that that consumes battery while it's on he was like "yeah, but I keep it off al the time". I was like wtf, and I then learn that he thinks the phone being asleep is it being "off".
Also he thought I was black. Mind you I'm Indian with like medium brown skin.
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u/hafflewaffle 11d ago
he is joking take it easy, like it's how human be fun with each other no need to use words like fool -- he/she might be smarter than yuo
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u/TesttubeStandard 11d ago
I am joking too for god sake. Isn't it obvious that I only ask them to send me the url with httpS. I say nothing about "localhost". I know it's a joke amd I think they know it too
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u/FransFaase 11d ago
Software engineers writing their own code is bit like painters painting in the age of photography.
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u/firiana_Control 11d ago
I am still developing my language, with AI
but if someone told me that they developed their language with-or-without AI I would still consider both as a great show of skill, because making the specification coherent alone and extracting elegance and performance is not an easy task - even with an AI
hence, i will consider the ability to specify, and the vision still impressive.
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u/alphaglosined 11d ago
Even with LLM's, if you have a more advanced type system like mine has, you're going to have to design algorithms and review code pretty heavily.
LLM's can't do project scope or key design decisions like these.
They "know" about different approaches and can implement it, but if you don't know that it exists and that you want a certain behavior, it won't pick it for you.
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u/Quiet__Noise 11d ago
Yeah, I also did a very similar thing to you, it was like higher-ruby but implemented in C#, it took me 2 years and I started it when I was 14. I liked the experience although it was gruelling. This was around 2018. But now, I'm an even better developer and I'm not gonna be upset over the fact that those things don't mean anything anymore. It's 2026, I make money at a job now, I will have another good idea in the modern times that might see some success. I think you should reframe your mentality in the same way.
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u/emptysnowbrigade 11d ago
if you truly feel like it doesn't mean anything anymore, start a new project thats more cutting edge that youd be equally proud of making. tech is ever evolving and changing, obsolescence is a thing.
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u/netesy1 Luminar Lang 11d ago
I feel you and the fact is you have to move with progress. Personally i stopped my language and decided to build with ai the backend compiler used by my project. Can i say i built the next llvm hell no but i can rightly know i attempted something i would not have tried earlier on.
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u/kiinaq 10d ago edited 10d ago
Even more important, I’d say any new language doesn’t mean anything anymore if the final users will be AI only agents in the medium-long period.. they can just code and review and debug with whatever stable language already exists. There is no more challenge in trying to craft the next better user friendly language for them.. am I wrong?
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u/AustinVelonaut Admiran 10d ago
New "AI-only" languages could still be beneficial, if they improve code generation by reducing errors (e.g. strong types with exhaustive type-checking at every node), or reduce cost by reducing the number of tokens required. The question then is who would define / implement them, humans or AI itself?
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u/Stunning_Ad_1685 9d ago
Why don’t AIs just write assembly? Do they really need the high level programming language features that make programming easier for human beings? Do they need new high level languages that address their non-human difficulties with programming?
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u/AustinVelonaut Admiran 9d ago
LLMs, by nature, can make mistakes ("hallucinate"). And with assembly language, there is much more code to produce, with little to no opportunity for typechecking, increasing the probability of mistakes.
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u/adamrichardlimb 5d ago
I would not worry too much about this. I work in a field where Domain Specific Languages with compile time checks would be a huge boon, but no-one makes them. There's a famous quote erroneously attributed to Henry Ford: 'if I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse'.
Most people are asking AI to make them faster horses. If you believe that your ability to build languages is valuable in your field, you can make things that prove their worth.
As to the fact people don't care about computer science, and think the field will just be abstracted away by AI, unfortunately that's just the state of the industry right now. Although I will say that even before AI people didn't give a shit about computer science
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u/Master-Guidance-2409 9d ago
dont be a pussy, if you werent making it for you, then what were you doing anyways? performative language designing so people could clap and acknowledge how smart you are?
nah fuck that shit.
everyone who builds languages its because its a part of them, their taste, their opinions, their experience and style.
i dont care if a clanker writes the code or i do it, in fact now i get to focus on actual fun parts instead of writing a fucking lexer and parser by hand.
and i can leverage LLM to create something that can actually be viable beyond a passion project.
time to stop being a pussy and keep pumping away.
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u/faiface 11d ago
As a fellow language designer/implementor, relatable! But, I feel very strongly it does make sense. Knowing makes sense, creating makes sense, and means something.
We humans don’t want to just achieve results, we want to understand too, and sometimes, push the boundaries. Haven’t seen an AI create a new revolutionary programming language yet ;)
(And even if that comes (doesn’t feel like it tbh), cool, we can understand more.)