[DougWebb]

This is nice, but I was hoping to find guidelines about designing the syntax for a new programming language. As others are saying, s-expression syntax is simple to parse because it's basically already structured like the AST. But s-expression syntax isn't so easy to develop in, especially for non-developers.

Why non-developers? I'm interested in DSLs that are used to add plugin-type scripting capabilities, so that advanced non-developer users can extend behavior on their own. Think Lua, but more specific to the domain. As far as syntax, I'm thinking about something more like BASIC for its simplicity.

[dragonwriter]

> This is nice, but I was hoping to find guidelines about designing the syntax for a new programming language. As others are saying, s-expression syntax is simple to parse because it's basically already structured like the AST. But s-expression syntax isn't so easy to develop in, especially for non-developers.

IME, the "especially for non-developers" part doesn't seem to be true. People who are exposed to s-expression syntax first don't seem to be any more likely to have problems with that syntax style than those introduced to programming with other syntaxes are with whatever syntax the are introduced to first; the people that are most put-off by s-expressions as a syntax of expressing programs are people who are attached to some other syntax first, and particularly people whose experience is with multiple languages all from the same syntax family, usually the ALGOL-style family.

[derekp7]

Take a look at the Shunting Yard algorithm -- this will go from standard (infix) to Postfix notation. And Postfix (RPN) is actually easier to interpret than Prefix (the main loop is about a half dozen lines or so).