Guy Steele's keynote at the 1998 ACM OOPSLA conference on "Growing a Language" discusses the importance of and issues associated with designing a programming language that can be grown by its users. Link to PDF
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/steele.pdf |
Some of the previous submissions:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=68918
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=92542
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122989
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150863
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=152311 <- 7 comments
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626380
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=827107
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2359174 <- 21 comments
This is a fabulous talk that I thoroughly commend. It's also, perhaps, for a slightly limited audience, but it shouldn't be. I think every programmer should see the whole thing, but most won't bother. Which is a shame.