The designers, who provided [[enterprise integration]] products for over 10 years, used their knowledge of the industry when designing the language,<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://blog.jclark.com/2019/09/ballerina-programming-language-part-0.html|title=Ballerina Programming Language Part 0 - Context|last=Clark|first=James|access-date=2020-09-16|language=en-GB}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://blog.jclark.com/2019/09/ballerina-programming-language-part-1.html|title=Ballerina Programming Language Part 1 - Concepts|last=Clark|first=James|access-date=2020-09-16|language=en-GB}}</ref> says WSO2 director and Ballerina founder James Clark.
Some key concepts in Ballerina include:
* The network in the language - Ballerina introduces fundamental, new abstractions of client objects, services, resource functions, and listeners to bring networking into the language.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://hackernoon.com/rethinking-programming-the-network-in-the-language-kn3z3y55|title=Rethinking Programming: The Network in the Language|last=Warusawithana|first=Lakmal|access-date=2020-09-16|language=en-GB}}</ref>
* [[Sequence diagram]]s for programming - In Ballerina, every program has a corresponding event diagram showing the processes involved and the sequence of messages exchanged between them.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://hackernoon.com/rethinking-programming-making-sequence-diagrams-cool-again-6z1p3yv9|title=Rethinking Programming: Making Sequence Diagrams Cool Again|last=Fernando|first=Anjana|access-date=2020-09-16|language=en-GB}}</ref>
* Structural, open-by-default typing - Ballerina has a [[Type system#Static type checking|statically typed]], [[structural type system]] that aims to be network data schema friendly.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://hackernoon.com/rethinking-programming-network-aware-type-system-8o7x3yh6|title=Rethinking Programming: Network Aware Type System|last=Fernando|first=Anjana|access-date=2020-09-16|language=en-GB}}</ref>
* Moving from code to cloud - Ballerina brings the entire program execution process to the hands of the developer with extensible metadata that gets compiled to runnable programs for all major cloud platforms.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://hackernoon.com/rethinking-programming-from-code-to-cloud-fy273yer|title=Rethinking Programming: From Code to Cloud|last=Warusawithana|first=Lakmal|access-date=2020-09-16|language=en-GB}}</ref>
* Automated observability - Ballerina incorporates features into the language itself that helps keep track of metrics, logs and tracing.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://hackernoon.com/rethinking-programming-automated-observability-dn14p3yxb|title=Rethinking Programming: Automated Observability|last=Fernando|first=Anjana|access-date=2020-09-16|language=en-GB}}</ref>
