Hoisting Expressions
The article proposes "hoisting expressions" as a programming language concept that allows expressions to be evaluated before the surrounding code, similar to variable hoisting in JavaScript, enabling cleaner syntax for lazy evaluation, caching, and compile-time computation without requiring explicit blocks or annotations.
Background
- The article discusses a proposed programming language feature called "hoisting expressions" — a way to let developers define a value or computation before it's used in code, while keeping the definition near where it's needed for readability.
- "Hoisting" is a concept from JavaScript where variable and function declarations are moved to the top of their scope by the interpreter; this post explores applying that idea explicitly in user-written code, not just as a behind-the-scenes behavior.
- The author, Yoshua Wuyts, is a well-known Rust developer and language designer (works on Rust and the experimental language "Calligraphy"), writing about PL (programming language) design — a niche topic that influences how future languages or language extensions might work.
- This matters because how languages handle definitions before use affects code clarity, compilation speed, and mental model — and new syntax ideas like this could eventually show up in mainstream languages (Rust, JavaScript, etc.).