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The other language that does what Zig is trying to do is the Jai language that Jonathan Blow has been developing, but it's not open to the public yet. We don't

by hasenj 9y ago

The other language that does what Zig is trying to do is the Jai language that Jonathan Blow has been developing, but it's not open to the public yet. We don't need a radically different language, really. We just need a language that combines some of the best ideas that have been developing recently in a clean way while keeping the language simple, not complex. D was trying to do that but then it exploded and became a monster just like C++. It's kind of just a slightly cleaner C++, but it's still a monster.

curun1r 9y ago
Perhaps what we need is more tools for creating languages so that it doesn't take a massive engineering effort to create a new language and to enable language features to be implemented once rather than for each new language. That way, we could have a ton of languages and everyone can choose their own "Goldilocks" language. LLVM is a great effort in this direction and now language designers can target multiple architectures and get a ton of optimizations essentially for free. And it's great to see things like coroutines get added at that level. But more could be built at that level and on top of it to give higher-level language features in that same essentially free manner. It'd be cool to see stuff like borrow checking and garbage collection get added in a similarly reusable way. The end result of this would be that syntax, the stuff that's mostly easy and yet most prone to bike shedding and developer aesthetics, could be mostly decoupled from the serious work normally associated with creating a language and compiler. And developers with less expertise could build quality languages that appeal to an unmet syntactical aesthetic without having to reinvent as much of the wheel as is currently necessary. Instead of having one language that brings together the best ideas, we'd just make those best ideas reusable so that any language could easily bring them together using whatever syntax shakes out of the bike shedding process.
adamrezich 9y ago
Friendly reminder that jblow's language still isn't named, and "jai" is just the file extension currently being used.
- billytetrud 9y ago
  Jai's a good unique name tho, and it wouldn't be a good idea for him to change that branding since he's already done years of outreach using that name.
  - adamrezich 9y ago
    The thing is, as far as I can tell, it's only other users that have been using that name. I haven't seen Blow use "Jai" or "JAI" himself (aside from the file extensions), though he doesn't make a fuss about it when people ask him questions about his language and refer to it as "Jai" or "JAI".
- hasenj 9y ago
  Everyone calls it Jai. I haven't watched the whole video series yet. Do you know why he uses the jai extension?
  - adamrezich 9y ago
    As far as I can tell he's never mentioned it, seemingly because it doesn't really matter to him at this point.

by hasenj 9y ago

curun1r 9y ago

Perhaps what we need is more tools for creating languages so that it doesn't take a massive engineering effort to create a new language and to enable language features to be implemented once rather than for each new language. That way, we could have a ton of languages and everyone can choose their own "Goldilocks" language. LLVM is a great effort in this direction and now language designers can target multiple architectures and get a ton of optimizations essentially for free. And it's great to see things like coroutines get added at that level. But more could be built at that level and on top of it to give higher-level language features in that same essentially free manner. It'd be cool to see stuff like borrow checking and garbage collection get added in a similarly reusable way. The end result of this would be that syntax, the stuff that's mostly easy and yet most prone to bike shedding and developer aesthetics, could be mostly decoupled from the serious work normally associated with creating a language and compiler. And developers with less expertise could build quality languages that appeal to an unmet syntactical aesthetic without having to reinvent as much of the wheel as is currently necessary. Instead of having one language that brings together the best ideas, we'd just make those best ideas reusable so that any language could easily bring them together using whatever syntax shakes out of the bike shedding process.

adamrezich 9y ago

Friendly reminder that jblow's language still isn't named, and "jai" is just the file extension currently being used.

billytetrud 9y ago
Jai's a good unique name tho, and it wouldn't be a good idea for him to change that branding since he's already done years of outreach using that name.
- adamrezich 9y ago
  The thing is, as far as I can tell, it's only other users that have been using that name. I haven't seen Blow use "Jai" or "JAI" himself (aside from the file extensions), though he doesn't make a fuss about it when people ask him questions about his language and refer to it as "Jai" or "JAI".
hasenj 9y ago
Everyone calls it Jai. I haven't watched the whole video series yet. Do you know why he uses the jai extension?
- adamrezich 9y ago
  As far as I can tell he's never mentioned it, seemingly because it doesn't really matter to him at this point.