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Can anyone explain what "designed for good programmers" means?

krapp 8y ago
> Can anyone explain what "designed for good programmers" means? It means "programmers who agree with Jonathan Blow and his opinions on what good programming is."
walki 8y ago
No garbage collection.
childintime 8y ago
In JAI you own the code, the data, the build system, everything. JAI runs at compile time, so you can introspect your code and generate custom builds or generate custom files, or structures, like dictionaries of similarly named functions. JAI doesn't implement abstractions (like objects or a GC) that might get in your way. JAI supports gradual refactoring and you can change your mind about the way memory is layed out ("AOS" (structs of arrays), delegates), and still use the same code. Want to shoot yourself in the foot with uninitialized variables? Fine! In general, if you know what you are doing, JAI will allow it. JAI is similar to C in spirit, but C is a rather poor implementation in comparison.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Many programming languages seem as though they are designed to force the programmer to be "safe", Rust's borrow checker is an example, but so is basically every GC-language ever. What Jon means by "designed for good programmers" is that the language design doesn't have this mindset that it needs to prevent the programmers from harming themselves, and instead focuses on allowing people who know what they're doing to be more productive doing it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
loup-vaillant 8y ago
Doesn't even try to prevent mistakes that a good programmer would avoid anyway. For instance, C++ has operator overloading, which when misused leads do horrible, unreadable code. Still, the feature can be useful in some cases (vector/matrix library comes to mind). Java on the other hand avoids this feature because it doesn't trust the programmers with it. As for JAI, it mostly means Jonathan Blow and his peers. I mean, he's obviously making a language for himself and whoever he hires. There's no point in catering to a different, wider audience. (The reason there's no point is because he doesn't need a whole ecosystem to support his language. He's trying to make it worth the effort even if he was the sole user.)

> Can anyone explain what "designed for good programmers" means? It means "programmers who agree with Jonathan Blow and his opinions on what good programming is."

walki 8y ago

No garbage collection.

childintime 8y ago

In JAI you own the code, the data, the build system, everything. JAI runs at compile time, so you can introspect your code and generate custom builds or generate custom files, or structures, like dictionaries of similarly named functions. JAI doesn't implement abstractions (like objects or a GC) that might get in your way. JAI supports gradual refactoring and you can change your mind about the way memory is layed out ("AOS" (structs of arrays), delegates), and still use the same code. Want to shoot yourself in the foot with uninitialized variables? Fine! In general, if you know what you are doing, JAI will allow it. JAI is similar to C in spirit, but C is a rather poor implementation in comparison.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

Many programming languages seem as though they are designed to force the programmer to be "safe", Rust's borrow checker is an example, but so is basically every GC-language ever. What Jon means by "designed for good programmers" is that the language design doesn't have this mindset that it needs to prevent the programmers from harming themselves, and instead focuses on allowing people who know what they're doing to be more productive doing it.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

loup-vaillant 8y ago

Doesn't even try to prevent mistakes that a good programmer would avoid anyway. For instance, C++ has operator overloading, which when misused leads do horrible, unreadable code. Still, the feature can be useful in some cases (vector/matrix library comes to mind). Java on the other hand avoids this feature because it doesn't trust the programmers with it. As for JAI, it mostly means Jonathan Blow and his peers. I mean, he's obviously making a language for himself and whoever he hires. There's no point in catering to a different, wider audience. (The reason there's no point is because he doesn't need a whole ecosystem to support his language. He's trying to make it worth the effort even if he was the sole user.)