Waaaaaay back in 2021, I started experimenting with a new programming language I call “Dada”. I’ve been tinkering with it ever since and I just realized that (oh my gosh!) I’ve never written even a single blog post about it! I figured I should fix that. This post will introduce some of the basic concepts of Dada as it is now.

Before you get any ideas, Dada isn’t fit for use. In fact the compiler doesn’t even really work because I keep changing the language before I get it all the way working. Honestly, Dada is more of a “stress relief” valve for me than anything else¹ – it’s fun to tinker with a programming language where I don’t have to worry about backwards compatibility, or RFCs, or anything else.

That said, Dada has been a very fertile source of ideas that I think could be applicable to Rust. And not just for language design: playing with the compiler is also what led to the new salsa design², which is now used by both rust-analyzer and Astral’s ty. So I really want to get those ideas out there!