Indeed, it is, and that's the point! Being interfaces to computers for humans, programming languages sit at the intersection of computer science and humanities. Lots of people like to treat programming languages like they're math class, but that's only half the picture. The other half is usability, ergonomics, learnability, and especially community. Not to mention the form of the language is all about aesthetics. How many times has someone on Hacker News called a language "beautiful" or "ugly" referring to the way it looks? When people praise Python they talk about how easy it is to read and how pleasant it is to look at compared to C++. Or look at what people say about Elm error messages versus C++ template errors. Actually a lot of what's wrong with C++ could have been averted if the designers had paid more attention in art class.
> But these days we would need greater insights into higher-level language semantics and inherent tradeoffs to guide language-design and language evolution.
Here's a talk that argues there's much more fertile languages ground for ideas outside of the "programming languages are math" area, which has been thoroughly strip-mined for decades:
This author takes the perspective that programming languages are much greater than the sum of the syntax + semantics + toolchain + libraries, and treating them as such is limiting their potential.
Indeed, it is, and that's the point! Being interfaces to computers for humans, programming languages sit at the intersection of computer science and humanities. Lots of people like to treat programming languages like they're math class, but that's only half the picture. The other half is usability, ergonomics, learnability, and especially community. Not to mention the form of the language is all about aesthetics. How many times has someone on Hacker News called a language "beautiful" or "ugly" referring to the way it looks? When people praise Python they talk about how easy it is to read and how pleasant it is to look at compared to C++. Or look at what people say about Elm error messages versus C++ template errors. Actually a lot of what's wrong with C++ could have been averted if the designers had paid more attention in art class.
> But these days we would need greater insights into higher-level language semantics and inherent tradeoffs to guide language-design and language evolution.
Here's a talk that argues there's much more fertile languages ground for ideas outside of the "programming languages are math" area, which has been thoroughly strip-mined for decades:
https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/my-splash-2016-keynote-...
This author takes the perspective that programming languages are much greater than the sum of the syntax + semantics + toolchain + libraries, and treating them as such is limiting their potential.