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0 pointsshadowgovt3y ago0 comments

I don't think it's a platform problem... It's a money problem.

I've got a toy language I've built at home for my own reasons. Lots of developers do.

The difference (especially in these modern times) between my toy and Rob Pike's toy is that Rob is paid by Google to develop it, hammer out the details, work out the bugs, and support it. As are the whole team Google dedicated to it.

Some languages get supported by volunteer armies (Lua comes to mind, last I checked), but TypeScript, Go, and Rust are supported / maintained by corporate money and it's hard to compete with that because a corporation can throw money at a language that isn't done yet while it's harder to get volunteers excited about a broken toolset.

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6 comments · 3 top-level

nandalism3y ago· 3 in thread

I constantly hear that "we can't do it without corporations" and yet there are so many counter examples.

Most of the corporations were built on free languages and ecosystems which existed before they did.

mattgreenrocks3y ago

There's been a shift away from vague distrust of corporations (think Slashdot) to full-on embrace. The fallout from that is we can't imagine platforms that don't require tens of millions of dollars to bootstrap, and we cling to the ones we have because they're so expensive.

Too big to fail is not the hacker ideology I grew up with. Maybe that's gone now.

shadowgovtOP3y ago

There's very little in the open source space that competes with, for example, npm + TypeScript + VSCode for usability (where "usability" here runs the gamut from package / dependency management to code comprehension / documentation / refactoring to debugging).

That kind of polished integration often costs money. In contrast, in the open source world we limped along with gcc + gdb for decades until Clang was able to force the issue (which was funded by Apple, Google, Microsoft, ARM, Sony, Intel, and AMD).

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pwinnski3y ago

I'm not sure what you're hearing is "we can't do it without corporations" so much as it is "the ones sponsored by corporations are better."

I mean, GIMP exists, but any one of a half-dozen commercial products built by fewer people in less time are easier to use and have better feature lists. It's not that it's not possible for GIMP to be best-in-class, it's that it isn't best-in-class. (And sure, dear reader, GIMP works perfectly well for you. Great!)

Given more time, I'd love to explore the idea that "most of the corporations were built on free languages and ecosystems" given how many of the companies we're talking about today seem to have some roots in C, developed under corporate control. But definitions are everything in a statement like that, so it probably would take a lot of time to sift through and ultimately convince nobody either way.

mattgreenrocks3y ago

Google's Go team is not that large AFAIK.

It's probably my love affair with Lisp speaking, but I really think there is space for PLs to implement 80% of production-level features with 20% effort and improve slowly as they turn out to be blockers. There's also a branding thing: users who are put off by lack of corporate funding won't be working on the ground floor of building a PL anyway. That's fine.

LLVM/JVM/WASM give leverage to both indie and corporate langs. More of those types of tools are great.

enneff3y ago

The difference between your toy and Robert, Rob, and Ken’s toy is that yours was built for your own reasons and theirs was built for the purposes of software engineering at scale. Whatever your thoughts about Go suiting that purpose, that was the intent, and why they were supported by Google in doing it.

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6 comments · 3 top-level

nandalism3y ago· 3 in thread

I constantly hear that "we can't do it without corporations" and yet there are so many counter examples.

Most of the corporations were built on free languages and ecosystems which existed before they did.

mattgreenrocks3y ago

Too big to fail is not the hacker ideology I grew up with. Maybe that's gone now.

shadowgovtOP3y ago

2 more replies

pwinnski3y ago

I'm not sure what you're hearing is "we can't do it without corporations" so much as it is "the ones sponsored by corporations are better."

mattgreenrocks3y ago

Google's Go team is not that large AFAIK.

LLVM/JVM/WASM give leverage to both indie and corporate langs. More of those types of tools are great.

enneff3y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse