5 Years and $5M Later: Inventing a New Programming Language for Web Development Was a Mistake
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The founders of Wasp, a full-stack web framework for JavaScript, reflect on five years and $5M spent building a custom programming language (DSL) as the configuration layer for their framework. They explain why they originally chose to create a new language (clean syntax, runtime-agnostic vision, and personal excitement about compilers), what went wrong (developer skepticism, IDE tooling burden, positioning confusion with 'wasp-lang'), and why they're now replacing the custom DSL with a TypeScript SDK. The core insight: the value was never the language itself, but Wasp's ability to maintain a high-level understanding of the entire app at compile time. The TypeScript SDK preserves that while eliminating years of friction.
