Two Languages in One

I stumbled across this blog post the other day describing a new programming language called “Glow” and thought the premise behind the language design was really interesting. Unlike most programming languages that have a consistent set of rules, “Glow” consists of two major programming paradigms. The two rule sets revolve around, what the author describes as, “big programming” and “small programming”. At a high-level i.e. objects, systems, components, etc, you want a strict rule set: explicitly specified types, immutability, no side-effects; but at a low-level i.e. functions, tasks, etc, you want the flexibility of dynamic types and to keep the code minimal by inferring types rather than explicitly specifying them.

A two paradigm solution to application design could be really beneficial as it better describes the approach taken when planning and designing code. The “Glow” language enforces this via a “piping” system which controls data flow, access and mutability. Going forward with my programming language I wonder how I could integrate some of these concepts.

I plan on investigating further to see if any similar languages exist and whether users find they reduce code complexity, bugs and side-effects. Also I wonder what other coding complexities could be reduced by hybrid languages