What kind of jobs are out there for someone who is interested in language design?

Question

Im currently implementing an interpreter for Scheme, and plan on reading Elements of Programming Languages and design a toy language for learning purpose. What kind of jobs are out there that require language design skills?

Answer 1

I think there are few; I think you'll rarely find a job ad "looking for a language designer", and in the rare case you do, it probably goes on to say "with 15 years of experience designing industrial-strength languages".

Your best bet is probably to work on compilers, where you can slowly gain influence in communities for that language, or on DSL tools.

Answer 2

If you have been watching what Microsoft is doing with Visual Studio 2010 you may be aware that they are big on Domain Specific Languages.

It is my opinion that this will become a hot topic once VS210 is released and that lots of companies will want developers with this skill.

Answer 3

Here is a little insite for you.

I used to work for Borland/Codegear and to be frank, the compiler guys we hired were mostly headhunted, i.e. we already knew who they were.

So if you really want to work in this space, start working in this space first...Catch 22 right. So, start out in the open source arena on your own pet projects, write whitepapers, write blogs, above all be visible!

Answer 4

To add on to what JonnyBoats was saying, take a look at the Oslo / m from Microsoft. This is Microsoft's latest toolset for creating domain specific languages.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/oslo/default.aspx