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by jeffdavis 3400 days ago
What programming languages have been developed in this manner? What were the results?
4 comments

Python. It was lauded for usability and became a 30 year success: http://python-history.blogspot.com/2009/02/early-language-de...
None. Typical usability testing with watching people do things doesn't apply to programming languages, because of how much more complex and larger languages are in comparison. At best this approach can be used to test usability of tooling, IDEs, but that's it.
I've heard it said that the creator of Elm regularly pairs with newbies and adjusts the language based on what they find difficult, but I don't have a citation.
If I recall correctly Microsoft did some regarding VB.