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0 pointsbwfan12319d ago0 comments

> It does not need consistent propaganda preaching how it's a better choice than "insert other language".

Indeed. There is an irrational urge in some folks to become language-missionaries. Usually such folks have gained expertise in that specific language and want to protect and expand their turf. There is a wide-range of software usecases requiring a variety of tools and no one language fits all.

Amusing side-note. xai was all-in on rust for their ai-stack back in 2023. But now, spacex controlled xai is apparently coding ai in C - perhaps with the attitude that if a language is good enough to control rockets it is good for ai.

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AnimalMuppet19d ago· 1 in thread

I think it's like this. People think differently. Someone finds a language that really fits the way they think, and it feels wonderful, and they feel like they've been let out of prison into this wonderful new freedom. And they, being empathetic humans, want other people to have the same experience, and they think that others will have the same experience if they just try this wonderful language. So they become language missionaries.

But what they miss is that other people think differently than them. Other people will feel let out of prison by a different language.

pdimitar19d ago

Beautifully put and I agree, with one nuance:

There are multiple ways to think about how to write software, and that number really is not as high as various language proponents want us to believe. They aim at 50-100 but I'd say we got maximum 20, if not 6-7.

Point being: stuff is starting to converge IMO. It's not endless exciting diversity. "How to write software" (and adjacently: what PL to use) is just a boring multi-dimensional math problem at its root.

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