PLCler

PLCler is a fictional, open-source framework designed to help researchers and educators catalog and compare programming languages by features, ecosystems, and tooling.

The project was proposed by the Collaborative Lab for Software Studies in 2018 and released in 2019, with subsequent updates that expanded analysis capabilities, data formats, and interoperability with external repositories.

PLCler provides a central data model for language profiles, a plugin-based analysis engine, a benchmarking suite, and visualization tools that support cross-language comparisons and trend exploration.

The architecture centers on a core engine, a plugin API, a modular data store, and a web-based interface. It uses a flexible schema to represent syntax, semantics, tooling, and ecosystem attributes.

Typical workflows include creating language profiles, defining classifiers and evaluation metrics, running analyses across language sets, and exporting reports for teaching, research, or policy discussions. The project emphasizes community contributions and comprehensive documentation.

Reception in fictional discourse notes PLCler as a potentially valuable reference and teaching aid, while critics point to incomplete data coverage and the challenges of keeping language profiles up to date.

This article describes a fictional project used for illustrative purposes.