Out of curiosty, could anyone explain to me the reason they think programming languages and the parts that combine into making them work are interesting?
I feel like I have an interest in it, but I'm having a hard time figuring out _why_ I find it so appealing.
I know the why doesn't matter as long as I enjoy it, but I'm curious what others think.
There's something inherently satisfying anytime you take simple constructs and fashion them together to model complex systems cleanly.
From chaos, order emerges, and a well-designed language is the medium through which you draw out that order (of course, libraries, frameworks, DSLs also a part of that story, but the language is the "base", and thus the most impactful in doing so). Languages also have the most potential for a small simplification to produce massive results, as it cascades through the other semantics and into the libraries and ecosystem. Of course, language changes also have the most potential to fuck everything up, but that's why one should always strive to avoid putting it into production, or really ever just using it period, if you want to enjoy the making of the thing.
Part of it may be the high degree of leverage. A compiler potentially reduces the effort required to get a computer to complete a desired task by several orders of magnitude.
It's also kind of exciting to bootstrap a machine as well. For example going from bare metal to a C compiler to a Linux kernel to being able to browse the web.
Personally I find it kind of exciting to be able to design and build a microprocessor and a compiler for it, magically turning logic gates and silicon (or your preferred implementation tech) into a usable system.
It's also nice to be able to understand a system from the device physics level up to the user interface (and maybe beyond into networked/distributed as well as sociotechnical systems.)
For me, part of it is a simple fondness for understanding things and a separate but closely related joy in making things that "go", things that act "on their own" as it were. I always kind of assumed it was an innate propensity, a kind of natural monkey curiosity. I was always taking things apart as a little kid. They say I disassembled the clothes dryer one time, but I don't remember it.
I like it when something goes from being mysterious magic to a familiar tool. (Like compilers.) And it's even more fun when you can use your tools and knowledge to create some new useful or beautiful (or both) thing with them.
I feel like I have an interest in it, but I'm having a hard time figuring out _why_ I find it so appealing. I know the why doesn't matter as long as I enjoy it, but I'm curious what others think.