6 ms·

Really hoping this project gets more traction. I'm learning Elm now and I'm really liking the syntax to the level that other languages feel rather cluttered to

Really hoping this project gets more traction. I'm learning Elm now and I'm really liking the syntax to the level that other languages feel rather cluttered to me now. The more I'm playing with types and learning to leverage them, the more I appreciate their power (yes, I'm late to the game) so making this statically typed is very interesting. However, there seem to be a saturation of new languages and not sure if there is enough eyeballs left for a new language that does not have a large corporate backing (FB, Google, Apple) or happens not to arrive on a perfect time with the right set of answers. Maybe BEAM, ML/Elm syntax and static typing is what everyone else is looking for. Edit: Video posted today of creator of Alpaca (Jeremy Pierre) giving a talk at Erlang Factory. It gives a nice overview of the state of the language - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cljFpz_cv2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cljFpz_cv2E

platz 10y ago
> enough eyeballs left for a new language that does not have a large corporate backing It's a solid point if the goal is winner-take-all style competitive victory. But I'm not sure software should co-op SV-startup-business exponential growth-or-die mindset. What happened to hacker culture? Are open source developers corporatist now? /end-speculative-rant
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  Open source is massively corporatist. Developers working for $0 to create tool chains that other developers spend their weekend learning so that the shareholders of their employers can increase their wealth.
- alextheparrot 10y ago
  There does seem to be a significant push to contribute to open-source at many large companies. Having money and people contributing as part (or all) of their day job can be quite a boon for projects. I agree with the premise of your point, though.
- salimmadjd 10y ago
  The point I was making is for something to get enough traction, so that it would get active contributors who help mature the language, tools, etc. I think there are only handful of people out there who can contribute in a meaningful way for a project like this. If they are consumed working on open source Swift or doing pull request on many things pushed by FB or Google or working contributing to existing projects like GHC, etc. Then the Alpaca project wont get the contributors it needs to show progress. If there is no progress, it falls into a vicious circle of no progress -> no traction -> no contributors -> no progress
  - wtetzner 10y ago
    The good news is that you don't need that big of a community for a language to do well. It does, of course, need to be big enough, but you don't need to compete too hard with the big corporation-backed languages to have your language community grow enough that it can sustain itself. Of course, I guess I don't have any real data on it, so this is just my intuition based on observing various languages. So, you know, just my 2 cents.
jerf 10y ago
There's always room for another language. What's hard is cracking into the very, very top tier, the C++, C#, Java, etc. tier. I am also increasingly of the opinion that it simply takes massive corporate backing to get to that level, based on the observation that I haven't seen anything get to that level without it. Python's the only one that has arguably gotten there, I think, and it's still debatable. That said, I do think that if you want to make a new language right now and really see it take off, you do need to find some problem that isn't well-solved, or come up with a reeaaalllly novel combination of things that didn't exist well before. It seems to me that this project is going to be shadowed by Haskell in a lot of ways. But that's only if you want to see it take off. Not all languages are put out there with that intent.
- spraak 10y ago
  I'd love to have something that takes the best of Go (static typing, fast compiles, binaries, community) and functional paradigm.
  - jerf 10y ago
    Ocaml is close. Not sure how their concurrency is going, but I'm sure the act of mentioning that will bring someone out to bring us up to date.
    - Athas 10y ago
      Compared to Go, OCaml is unfortunately a rather large language. It has many non-orthogonal features, some of which are not used widely. The impression I get from Go programmers is that the small size of the language is one of the chief attractors.
      - jnbiche 10y ago
        > Compared to Go, OCaml is unfortunately a rather large language. I agree. That said, ML is definitely a small language like Go, without OCaml's extras like the object system. Alas, ML lacks Go's awesome and very modern standard library, which is a key part of Go's allure. But yes, I would adore a functional language with Go's best features, particularly the standard library, solid concurrency, simplicity/ease-of-learning, fast compiles, binaries, static, etc.
psiclops 10y ago
I haven't used Elm yet, but if you like it, check out the language it is implemented in, Haskell
- salimmadjd 10y ago
  I've been trying to crack Haskell for a while, but didn't find it approachable at first. Somehow Elm and building simple web apps made grasping FP easier. So now that I've learnt a bit of Elm, I find I can grasp Haskell more and spend a bit playing with. The best part is, after reading this [0] I'm finally grasping Monads. [0] http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_monads_in_pictures.html http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_...
  - ryanplant-au 10y ago
    I learnt more about Haskell in ten days of using Elm than I would have in another ten days of studying Haskell, personally. I think Elm makes a better introduction to FP concepts because there's much less you have to absorb before you reach the point where you can start practicing by doing useful work. Obviously part of that is the fact that Elm removes or hides certain things Haskell has, but an even bigger reason is that you can just say "...and then 'main' returns the HTML element or Html.program that actually gets displayed" and not have to go down the road of IO actions, functors, etc. You can stop at that point and start making working useful applications while getting comfortable with immutability, purity, the type system, and control flow and iteration under those constraints. Learning Haskell first, you don't have that opportunity to stop and start practicing. You need to move on an understand at least IO actions, functors, applicatives, typeclasses, and other higher-level concepts before you can construct even a simple practice project. Dreaming up a coherent program structure/flow in this weird new immutable and pure world seems hard enough to a beginner without also having to understand how applicative functors fit into the equation. Having that opportunity to stop and stretch your legs by actually doing a project is a major help to a lot of people, that's what makes all the difference. And then 95% of what you've learned transfers directly into Haskell.
  - mikekchar 10y ago
leshow 10y ago
I think Elm is great, but the language designer has really crippled it IMO by not including abstractions for types. Something analogous to typeclasses would be hugely beneficial. As it is the language gets around it by making some built in things magic, I found this frustrating after a while.

platz 10y ago

> enough eyeballs left for a new language that does not have a large corporate backing It's a solid point if the goal is winner-take-all style competitive victory. But I'm not sure software should co-op SV-startup-business exponential growth-or-die mindset. What happened to hacker culture? Are open source developers corporatist now? /end-speculative-rant

bbcbasic 10y ago
Open source is massively corporatist. Developers working for $0 to create tool chains that other developers spend their weekend learning so that the shareholders of their employers can increase their wealth.
alextheparrot 10y ago
There does seem to be a significant push to contribute to open-source at many large companies. Having money and people contributing as part (or all) of their day job can be quite a boon for projects. I agree with the premise of your point, though.
salimmadjd 10y ago
The point I was making is for something to get enough traction, so that it would get active contributors who help mature the language, tools, etc. I think there are only handful of people out there who can contribute in a meaningful way for a project like this. If they are consumed working on open source Swift or doing pull request on many things pushed by FB or Google or working contributing to existing projects like GHC, etc. Then the Alpaca project wont get the contributors it needs to show progress. If there is no progress, it falls into a vicious circle of no progress -> no traction -> no contributors -> no progress
- wtetzner 10y ago
  The good news is that you don't need that big of a community for a language to do well. It does, of course, need to be big enough, but you don't need to compete too hard with the big corporation-backed languages to have your language community grow enough that it can sustain itself. Of course, I guess I don't have any real data on it, so this is just my intuition based on observing various languages. So, you know, just my 2 cents.

jerf 10y ago

There's always room for another language. What's hard is cracking into the very, very top tier, the C++, C#, Java, etc. tier. I am also increasingly of the opinion that it simply takes massive corporate backing to get to that level, based on the observation that I haven't seen anything get to that level without it. Python's the only one that has arguably gotten there, I think, and it's still debatable. That said, I do think that if you want to make a new language right now and really see it take off, you do need to find some problem that isn't well-solved, or come up with a reeaaalllly novel combination of things that didn't exist well before. It seems to me that this project is going to be shadowed by Haskell in a lot of ways. But that's only if you want to see it take off. Not all languages are put out there with that intent.

spraak 10y ago
I'd love to have something that takes the best of Go (static typing, fast compiles, binaries, community) and functional paradigm.
- jerf 10y ago
  Ocaml is close. Not sure how their concurrency is going, but I'm sure the act of mentioning that will bring someone out to bring us up to date.
  - Athas 10y ago
    Compared to Go, OCaml is unfortunately a rather large language. It has many non-orthogonal features, some of which are not used widely. The impression I get from Go programmers is that the small size of the language is one of the chief attractors.
    - jnbiche 10y ago
      > Compared to Go, OCaml is unfortunately a rather large language. I agree. That said, ML is definitely a small language like Go, without OCaml's extras like the object system. Alas, ML lacks Go's awesome and very modern standard library, which is a key part of Go's allure. But yes, I would adore a functional language with Go's best features, particularly the standard library, solid concurrency, simplicity/ease-of-learning, fast compiles, binaries, static, etc.

psiclops 10y ago

I haven't used Elm yet, but if you like it, check out the language it is implemented in, Haskell

salimmadjd 10y ago
I've been trying to crack Haskell for a while, but didn't find it approachable at first. Somehow Elm and building simple web apps made grasping FP easier. So now that I've learnt a bit of Elm, I find I can grasp Haskell more and spend a bit playing with. The best part is, after reading this [0] I'm finally grasping Monads. [0] http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_monads_in_pictures.html http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_...
- ryanplant-au 10y ago
  I learnt more about Haskell in ten days of using Elm than I would have in another ten days of studying Haskell, personally. I think Elm makes a better introduction to FP concepts because there's much less you have to absorb before you reach the point where you can start practicing by doing useful work. Obviously part of that is the fact that Elm removes or hides certain things Haskell has, but an even bigger reason is that you can just say "...and then 'main' returns the HTML element or Html.program that actually gets displayed" and not have to go down the road of IO actions, functors, etc. You can stop at that point and start making working useful applications while getting comfortable with immutability, purity, the type system, and control flow and iteration under those constraints. Learning Haskell first, you don't have that opportunity to stop and start practicing. You need to move on an understand at least IO actions, functors, applicatives, typeclasses, and other higher-level concepts before you can construct even a simple practice project. Dreaming up a coherent program structure/flow in this weird new immutable and pure world seems hard enough to a beginner without also having to understand how applicative functors fit into the equation. Having that opportunity to stop and stretch your legs by actually doing a project is a major help to a lot of people, that's what makes all the difference. And then 95% of what you've learned transfers directly into Haskell.
- mikekchar 10y ago

leshow 10y ago

I think Elm is great, but the language designer has really crippled it IMO by not including abstractions for types. Something analogous to typeclasses would be hugely beneficial. As it is the language gets around it by making some built in things magic, I found this frustrating after a while.