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Evolving programming languages in the AI era

139 points · 99 comments · pjm331

  1. spankalee · · focus · HN ↗
    This part:

    ---

    - Correct by construction: the language makes invalid states or programs hard or impossible to express.

    - Statically established: types, proofs, and static analysis establish properties before execution.

    - Runtime-enforced: memory management, isolation, capability boundaries, and other runtime enforced properties.

    - Empirically validated: program validation through tests, property-based testing, and fuzzing.

    ---

    Along with being familiar, so it&#x27;s easy to generate, is a huge part of why I&#x27;m building Zena: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zena-lang.dev&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zena-lang.dev&#x2F;

    I don&#x27;t have the AI-first rationale put into the public docs well just yet, but I mention some of it here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zena-lang.dev&#x2F;guide&#x2F;why-zena&#x2F;#familiar-to-humans-and-to-agents" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zena-lang.dev&#x2F;guide&#x2F;why-zena&#x2F;#familiar-to-humans-and...

    along with a doc in the repo on this topic: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;elematic&#x2F;zena&#x2F;blob&#x2F;main&#x2F;docs&#x2F;design&#x2F;ai-first-language.md" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;elematic&#x2F;zena&#x2F;blob&#x2F;main&#x2F;docs&#x2F;design&#x2F;ai-fi...

    In short, the more deterministic, automated, checks the better. AI can deal with a pedantic language. I intend to add statically verified structured concurrency, units of measure, contracts, and eventually more and more formal methods into the language so it can be a familiar TYpeScript-like base with as many static guarantees as we can fit in.

    I also think that fine-grained isolation, which Zena gets via Web Assembly, is critical for limiting the capabilities of generated code and the blast radius of bugs, vulnerabilities, and non-aligned behavior.

    I do have an optimistic hope that a language also optimized for humans, readability and simple semantics especially, has value in the future, even when most code is generated. We&#x27;ll see about that.

    1. ryuuseijin · · focus · HN ↗
      I love this. I was thinking about a &quot;cleaned up&quot; typescript for a while now, and this seems to be it. I believe this can work better as an &quot;ai-first&quot; language than some other attempts I&#x27;ve seen that try to reinvent the language from scratch.

      One thing I would love to have as a feature is native compilation.

      1. armchairhacker · · focus · HN ↗
        Ironically, since AI can build an STL and tooling (up to a full OS!), I think now presents an opportunity for a language that does start from scratch, at least targeting hobbyists (besides those specifically looking for novel languages).
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