--- title: A programming language for humans. | daily.dev description: EYG (Eat Your Greens) is a statically typed functional programming language designed for 'makers' — technically minded non-professional developers who can... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/a-programming-language-for-humans--2hjvsvivp twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: A programming language for humans. | daily.dev og:description: EYG (Eat Your Greens) is a statically typed functional programming language designed for 'makers' — technically minded non-professional developers who can... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/a-programming-language-for-humans--2hjvsvivp og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/2HJVsVIVp.png og:image:alt: A programming language for humans. og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # A programming language for humans. **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary EYG (Eat Your Greens) is a statically typed functional programming language designed for 'makers' — technically minded non-professional developers who can describe logic but struggle with deployment, dependencies, and infrastructure. The author argues that most end-user programming tools solve the wrong problem by simplifying syntax rather than eliminating operational complexity. EYG addresses this by handling runtime/platform concerns automatically, using structural typing with full type inference (no upfront type definitions required), content-addressed hashed dependencies to avoid dependency hell, and effect typing to help runtimes provide better assistance. The language targets glue scripts, personal dashboards, and automations rather than large-scale professional software projects. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 3 discussions and 71 comments across hackernews, lobsters (as of 2026-07-28). **TL;DR:** The community is broadly intrigued by EYG's goal of making programming accessible to 'makers' (people comfortable with logic but not computer plumbing), but skeptical about whether a new language is the right vehicle — with lively debate about historical precedents, the role of LLMs, and what non-developer languages actually need to succeed. **Sentiment:** 35% positive · 45% mixed · 20% skeptical **The case for** - The structural editor that prevents syntactically invalid code is praised as impressive. - Targeting 'makers' (logic-capable but ops-averse people) is seen as a more precise and sympathetic framing than 'normies'. - A fully inferred type system including effects and improved dependency management are highlighted as meaningful differentiators over Python. - Spreadsheets and LOGO are cited as evidence that well-designed non-developer programming environments can genuinely succeed. - The separation of logic cognition from low-level computer plumbing resonates with commenters as a historically meaningful distinction. **The pushback** - Skeptics argue that languages designed for non-developers historically end up used only by professionals anyway (COBOL, SQL, VB). - Some feel functional programming paradigms and pattern matching are too complex for the target audience. - A commenter argues that success in this space depends almost entirely on ecosystem/community (like Python's NumPy/Jupyter), not language design. - The rise of LLMs is raised as making new programming languages less necessary, though this view is contested. - The project's website was reported as broken on mobile. **By community** - lobsters (mixed): Lobsters commenters flagged a broken mobile site and questioned how EYG differs from Pyret, with the author acknowledging both issues but not fully resolving the comparison. - hackernews (mixed): Hacker News has a wide-ranging, substantive debate about whether non-developer languages can succeed, with genuine interest in EYG's structural editor and design goals alongside healthy skepticism about the approach. **Hottest debate:** Whether languages designed for non-developers inevitably get adopted only by professionals, or whether the right design (like spreadsheets or LOGO) can genuinely reach a broader audience. **Open questions** - How does EYG differ meaningfully from Pyret or other educational/end-user languages? - What specific 'computer plumbing' friction does EYG eliminate that Python with good libraries does not? - How will EYG build the ecosystem and community that commenters argue matters more than language design? - Does the rise of LLMs make a new non-developer language redundant, or are they complementary tools? **Highlights** > How can you say that when millions of non-programmers are using AI to write programs all of a sudden? The problem isn't with non programmers it's with the languages they've been given are usually written by people who are keen to write languages that conform to their sensibilities rather than the programmer's. For example: I would say that 1-based indexing is pretty much required for a language targeting non-developers; Excel, SQL, R, Matlab, Cobol, Mathematica, Lua are all 1-indexed and all target non-developers. Most PL devs refuse to do this citing how unnatural it is for themselves to reason about, and how Dijkstra was right about the beauty of 0-based indexes. Sorry, but all that is irrelevant when you're trying to convince a non dev that "Actually it makes a lot of sense that the first thing is called 0". They hear that and they tune out because it asks them to abandon their familiar assumptions too early, and they're unwilling to do that on promises of it getting better. So the first problem people have in making languages for non-developers is they make it like Python, because Python is considered an easy language for beginners. Big mistake, because then you've only appealed to people for whom Python is appealing. Those are not the people we're trying to get with a non-dev language, and besides we already have Python for that. You look at the top languages used by non devs and you can see that they appreciate aspects of languages that devs do not, so that's why devs fail so regularly at this. But there are some success stories you point out. Then there's of course the biggest example you forgot: Excel. And it's not a surprise this one is always forgotten by programmers because despite being a programming language it doesn't follow typical programming language conventions, and as a design artifact it sits well outside the design hornet's nest that is the C/C++/Java/Javascript/Python which comprise most of mainstream programming. Finally there is LOGO - This one is often missed, but it's a lisp-like language that allowed small children to program complex applications like differential physics coursework which grad students find difficult to program, and they're able to do it simply by reframing the program into something they are familiar with like their own body rather than abstract concepts like integration. They called this "body syntonic reasoning" and it was impressive because the language itself contained the pedogogical framing to enable this. If it hadn't and just said "Here's what a for loop it, code it up!" it wouldn't have worked. This shows you in order to get non-developers to code, you have to approach them with an uncommon level of empathy for how they thin, and I don't know if most lang developers are up to that task. > — [ModernMech on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49082847) > Surprisingly, I've met non-programmers who easily learned languages considered "strange" or difficult to understand by professional programmers (Forth is even somewhat popular among astronomers, but I've also met people using Prolog for their programming needs, even J). I've worked quite a bit with scientists who mostly use Python for their programming-related tasks. To me, it seems that the reason to work with Python has very little to do with the qualities of the language, rather the tools and the community around it. There's nothing specially intuitive or helpful about Python when it comes to doing scientific stuff, not anymore than, say, in PHP or Lua etc. languages from the same general category (which we don't see used in the same setting). It's the libraries / tools like NumPy and Jupyter that make the difference. From just looking at EYG, I can't tell if it's a good match for the problem or not. But, really, the language design doesn't seem to play an important role in this context. If it somehow manages to win popularity among the people it's trying to engage -- great! But, unless one has an army of "evangelists" and the marketing budget rivaling GDPs of smaller countries, the success seem to be completely random and unpredictable (with quite low success rate). > — [crabbone on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49081521) > from the article > My hypothesis > Developers deal with two broad categories of work. > - Describing the logic of the problem they are solving using language constructs like if, loop, var etc. > - Working with computers to run those problems using constucts like $PATH, /var/tmp and AWS. > There are a lot of humans who can do the first work fine but don’t have the time to master the second category. I call these humans “makers”. the idea seems to be to make an end-user programming language for makers. makers want to make not ask ai to make, and they are capable of writing code, actually, it's just all the computer plumbing that's too much of a pain. a sophisticated programming language to write personal software that cuts out the computer plumbing would be something i'd love. i'm not fully clear how that would be done, but i like the thought. > — [pasquinelli on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49078835) > EYG's structure editor is amazing, not letting you create syntactically invalid code etc. > — [veqq on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079497) > Millions of people learn and practice functional reactive programming every day, without considering themselves software developers. They just use spreadsheets. Many of the lofty sounding concepts of programming were invented to make things simpler. Show them from a right aspect, and they are quite approachable to a non-engineer. > — [nine\_k on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079261) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48731964) · 4 points · 0 comments - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/tvczml/programming_language_for_humans) · 1 points · 4 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49078463) · 34 points · 67 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [EYG news: A year of EYG development and proper open source](https://daily.dev/posts/eyg-news-a-year-of-eyg-development-and-proper-open-source-lqcnxqaej) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [I built a programming language using Claude Code — Ankur Sethi's Internet Website](https://daily.dev/posts/i-built-a-programming-language-using-claude-code-ankur-sethi-s-internet-website-ogllu4laq) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Code BEAM Europe 2025 - Learning Resources / Talks - Erlang Forums](https://daily.dev/posts/code-beam-europe-2025---learning-resources-talks---erlang-forums-3gdl6mcnf) · Erlang Forums · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - ['Better C' playgrounds](https://daily.dev/posts/better-c-playgrounds-ucctuhbyo) · Anton Zhiyanov · 7 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#functional-programming](https://daily.dev/tags/functional-programming), [#type-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/type-systems) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/a-programming-language-for-humans--2hjvsvivp) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"A programming language for humans.","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-programming-language-for-humans--2hjvsvivp","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-programming-language-for-humans--2hjvsvivp"},"datePublished":"2026-07-28T04:28:44.894Z","dateModified":"2026-07-28T13:31:39.796Z","description":"EYG (Eat Your Greens) is a statically typed functional programming language designed for 'makers' — technically minded non-professional developers who can...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/0f73b008404fc1d98f1e06be3b6579d8?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/0f73b008404fc1d98f1e06be3b6579d8?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-programming-language-for-humans--2hjvsvivp","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"functional-programming,type-systems","timeRequired":"PT7M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"A programming language for humans."}]} ```