The Programming Languages Zoo

What might a programming language designed specifically as a UI for coding agents look like?

Serious (germ of a) question.

It seems that in practice no it's not possible based on what I've read from people much closer to programming language design and compiler work.

"In practice, the challenge of programming language design is not one of expanding a well-defined frontier, it is grappling with a neverending list of fundamental tradeoffs between mutually incompatible features.

Subtyping is tantalizingly useful but makes complete type inference incredibly difficult (and in general, provably impossible). Structural typing drastically reduces the burden of assigning a name to every uninteresting intermediate form but more or less precludes taking advantage of Haskell-style typeclasses or Rust-style traits. Dynamic dispatch substantially assists decoupling of software components but can come with a significant performance cost without a JIT. Just-in-time compilation can use runtime information to optimize code in ways that permit more flexible coding patterns, but JIT performance can be unpredictable, and the overhead of an optimizing JIT is substantial. Sophisticated metaprogramming systems can radically cut down on boilerplate and improve program concision and even readability, but they can have substantial runtime or compile-time overhead and tend to thwart automated tooling. The list goes on and on."

From https://lexi-lambda.github.io/blog/2025/05/29/a-break-from-p...

I would assume not. Consider ARC vs GC. With ARC the programmer manages memory and with GC the compiler manages it. People choose one or the other because of the style they're going after. Could you set a flag for it. Maybe if all libraries you download were pre-compiled perhaps.

Personally, I just prefer to know that the team that supports the tool I'm using is dedicated to "that one thing" I'm after.

Oz is maybe what you looking for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(programming_language)

Since all languages compile to the same representation on silicon (give or take a few opcodes) it would have to be a language with customizable grammar and runtime.

I for one would LOVE to make semicolons; optional and choose between {} braces/indentation per project/file, just like we can with tabs/spaces now (tabs are superior)