These sources are about precise expression. They include programming languages, specs, chord notation and an alphabet designed on purpose. A recurring question is what a notation makes easy to say.
A Lean Syntax Primer
An opinionated beginner's tour of Lean syntax, building from definitions to proofs.
A sufficiently detailed spec is code
An argument that a spec precise enough to generate code has become code.
DSLs Enable Reliable Use of LLMs
An argument that small languages give generated code firm boundaries.
Human Judgment as a Specification
A tool that recovers intent by asking people about concrete disagreements.
On the foolishness of "natural language programming" (EWD 667)
A short essay by Edsger Dijkstra arguing against programming in natural language.
Show HN: Kastor – Terraform-style specs for AI agents
A Hacker News thread where a developer introduces Kastor, a spec language for agents.
Understanding Spec-Driven-Development: Kiro, spec-kit, and Tessl
An article defining spec-driven development and describing the author's trials of three tools.
Everyone Says Assembly Is Untyped—Everyone Is Wrong
A design rationale for the typed inline assembly system in the Odin programming language.
Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I
The 1960 paper in which John McCarthy defines LISP.
Show HN: See chords as flags – Visual harmony of top composers on musescore
A Show HN thread where a developer presents Rawl, a colored chord notation.
Prompts are code, .json/.md files are state
A post proposing that prompts are programs and JSON or Markdown files hold state.
Structured CoT: Shorter Reasoning with a Grammar File
A blog post testing whether a grammar can shorten a local model's reasoning.
Hangul
A Wikipedia article on Hangul, the Korean alphabet, covering its history, design and use.
Flint: A Visualization Language for the AI Era
The page introduces Flint, a chart specification language built so AI agents can make charts.
A mathematical formalisation of dimensional analysis
A blog post giving two mathematical models for physical units and dimensions.
Radium Music Editor
A Hacker News thread where commenters discuss the Radium editor and trackers.
Welcome, the entire land
A blog post about getting "Hello World" translated into hieroglyphs for a T-shirt.
How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?
A science column showing how the number of elementary particles depends on what is counted.
Show HN: Python Simulator of David Deutsch's "Constructor Theory of Time"
A Show HN thread where the author presents Python code encoding a physics paper.