4 ms·

I have nothing against Zig, but... am I the only one feeling "new programming language fatigue" lately? Seems like there are several new ones per week these day

I have nothing against Zig, but... am I the only one feeling "new programming language fatigue" lately? Seems like there are several new ones per week these days.

smt88 8y ago
I get what you mean, but Zig is a little different because it's not a naive, vanity project. All of its motivations are practical and related to the usability of the language.
isaachier 8y ago
I usually agree, but at least Zig has something new to bring to the table (allocation safety).
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Programming languages has been one of my major subjects at the university and I don't see anything new in Zig regarding memory allocation.
  - AndyKelley 8y ago
    The only thing that's new is the convention to actually handle out of memory correctly, and the convention to accept an allocator as a parameter rather than using a global allocator.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Yep, nothing new unless one only knows C.
Caster9 8y ago
It's getting easier to build them.
- richardwhiuk 8y ago
  It's not - it's getting harder to build worthwhile ones. The barrier to entry is higher, the expectations on the size of the standard library are higher, the expected quality of tools is higher.
  - andrewflnr 8y ago
    But it's getting easier to just implement a language at all. That might be all you need to hit HN. No one said anything about "worthwhile" ones.
    - mmirate 8y ago
      That says a lot more about HN than about anything else...
      - andrewflnr 8y ago
        It says that we look for more in an idea than pure utility, that cleverness and beauty also count. That's a good thing.
        mmirate 8y ago
        > That's a good thing. Maybe, maybe not, but luckily that question's not very important. Here's what is: Where is the cleverness and beauty in Yet Another Boring LLVM Frontend(tm)? Zig and Rust are more than that, I'll readily grant - but that description does fall under the umbrella of "implementing a language".
  - blt 8y ago
    Everything in your second sentence is true, but it seems like LLVM has been a huge boost. I think a lot more programmers are comfortable with parsing and ASTs than they are with the x86 instruction set. Not having to write IL->CPU codegen or peephole optimizations significantly lowers barrier for entry to compiled PL development. (I say this as just an observer, having written interpreters but no compiled languages.)
codr4 8y ago
One of my teachers at university kept repeating that you can't really call yourself a programmer before you've implemented at least one language. I don't know about that, everyone is entitled to an opinion. What I do know is that it's one of precious few things in software that I still find interesting enough to bother [0]. I'm guessing part of the answer is that this is where you end up sooner or later. And then we have the internet, which is a big part of the equation. It's easy to get numb, but I remember a time when information about implementing interpreters/compilers was VERY hard to come by. It's all good from my perspective, we're barely scratching the surface of what is possible and there are plenty of good ideas left to rediscover in our history. But I do wish that more designers would dare to step outside of the box more. Creating a language isn't about cherry picking features from existing languages, it's about finding better ways of solving problems. [0] https://github.com/codr4life/snabl https://github.com/codr4life/snabl
pjmlp 8y ago
As language geek I love playing around with new languages. For production code I have learned to choose programming languages that are first class citzen in the platform or libraries that are required for a given project. While it might seem boring or outdated, it is much more productive and future proof than picking the language and then sort out how to integrate them.
edflsafoiewq 8y ago
What I like about Zig is that its comptime facility makes the compiler a mixed evaluator in Andrei Ershov's sense: the compiler works by, for comptime structures, evaluating them, and for non-comptime structures, emitting a residual program that will evaluate them at run-time. It offers an accessible form of partial evaluation.
dixego 8y ago
I love seeing new programming languages. Obviously one expects most of them will never get anywhere but it's interesting to see the ways in which people want to be able to make programs but are unable to in existing programming languages, expressed in the form of a language they'd want to use.

I have nothing against Zig, but... am I the only one feeling "new programming language fatigue" lately? Seems like there are several new ones per week these days.

smt88 8y ago

I get what you mean, but Zig is a little different because it's not a naive, vanity project. All of its motivations are practical and related to the usability of the language.

isaachier 8y ago

I usually agree, but at least Zig has something new to bring to the table (allocation safety).

pjmlp 8y ago
Programming languages has been one of my major subjects at the university and I don't see anything new in Zig regarding memory allocation.
- AndyKelley 8y ago
  The only thing that's new is the convention to actually handle out of memory correctly, and the convention to accept an allocator as a parameter rather than using a global allocator.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Yep, nothing new unless one only knows C.

Caster9 8y ago

It's getting easier to build them.

richardwhiuk 8y ago
It's not - it's getting harder to build worthwhile ones. The barrier to entry is higher, the expectations on the size of the standard library are higher, the expected quality of tools is higher.
- andrewflnr 8y ago
  But it's getting easier to just implement a language at all. That might be all you need to hit HN. No one said anything about "worthwhile" ones.
  - mmirate 8y ago
    That says a lot more about HN than about anything else...
    - andrewflnr 8y ago
      It says that we look for more in an idea than pure utility, that cleverness and beauty also count. That's a good thing.
      - mmirate 8y ago
        > That's a good thing. Maybe, maybe not, but luckily that question's not very important. Here's what is: Where is the cleverness and beauty in Yet Another Boring LLVM Frontend(tm)? Zig and Rust are more than that, I'll readily grant - but that description does fall under the umbrella of "implementing a language".
- blt 8y ago
  Everything in your second sentence is true, but it seems like LLVM has been a huge boost. I think a lot more programmers are comfortable with parsing and ASTs than they are with the x86 instruction set. Not having to write IL->CPU codegen or peephole optimizations significantly lowers barrier for entry to compiled PL development. (I say this as just an observer, having written interpreters but no compiled languages.)

codr4 8y ago

One of my teachers at university kept repeating that you can't really call yourself a programmer before you've implemented at least one language. I don't know about that, everyone is entitled to an opinion. What I do know is that it's one of precious few things in software that I still find interesting enough to bother [0]. I'm guessing part of the answer is that this is where you end up sooner or later. And then we have the internet, which is a big part of the equation. It's easy to get numb, but I remember a time when information about implementing interpreters/compilers was VERY hard to come by. It's all good from my perspective, we're barely scratching the surface of what is possible and there are plenty of good ideas left to rediscover in our history. But I do wish that more designers would dare to step outside of the box more. Creating a language isn't about cherry picking features from existing languages, it's about finding better ways of solving problems. [0] https://github.com/codr4life/snabl https://github.com/codr4life/snabl

pjmlp 8y ago

As language geek I love playing around with new languages. For production code I have learned to choose programming languages that are first class citzen in the platform or libraries that are required for a given project. While it might seem boring or outdated, it is much more productive and future proof than picking the language and then sort out how to integrate them.

edflsafoiewq 8y ago

What I like about Zig is that its comptime facility makes the compiler a mixed evaluator in Andrei Ershov's sense: the compiler works by, for comptime structures, evaluating them, and for non-comptime structures, emitting a residual program that will evaluate them at run-time. It offers an accessible form of partial evaluation.

dixego 8y ago

I love seeing new programming languages. Obviously one expects most of them will never get anywhere but it's interesting to see the ways in which people want to be able to make programs but are unable to in existing programming languages, expressed in the form of a language they'd want to use.