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OOPSLA Conference: Growing a Language

Computer History Museum · talk · Watch on YouTube

Programming language designTech pioneers & interviews

What it is

Guy Steele's classic 1998 OOPSLA keynote on how a programming language must grow with its user community. He delivers it in a playful style, starting with only monosyllabic words and defining new terms as he goes.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Treated as a must-watch for language designers, and cited whenever extensibility and language size are debated.

  • 6 people recommended it
  • 6 different months
  • 2 strong recommendations
  • first 2020, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “In case anyone hasn't seen this most excellent talk on this topic, I highly recommend”

    Most excellent talk on growing a language.

    nfoz, 2022-01 · Strong recommendation · in “In defense of complicated programming languages”

  2. “This is an excellent talk, and exactly where my mind went, too.”

    Excellent talk; better upload without capture errors.

    MrDOS, 2022-08 · Strong recommendation · in “The Up-Goer Five Text Editor”

  3. “But very recently the Computer History Museum published a cleaned-up version”

    Cleaned-up version of the Growing a Language talk.

    jdontillman, 2020-09 · Recommendation · in “Growing a Language (1998) [video]”

  4. “Growing a Language by Guy Steele”

    Listed among inspiring talks.

    pfarrell, 2022-11 · Recommendation · in “Fred Brooks has died”

  5. “A good watch for the fine people in this thread”

    Related talk on language size, broad concepts beyond Java.

    craftuser, 2023-03 · Recommendation · in “How Big Should a Programming Language Be?”

  6. “At least we got this talk from guy steele”

    A valuable talk from Guy Steele.

    pohl, 2026-07 · Recommendation · in “A Forlorn Hope of Fortran Modernisation”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: guy steele, language growth, extensibility, oopsla, java

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