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Marketing and good communication design is important though, if you want to actually reach new users. If somebody can't get the gist of what you're about from a

by bjz_ 8y ago

Marketing and good communication design is important though, if you want to actually reach new users. If somebody can't get the gist of what you're about from a glance, they are far less likely to invest a year into giving it a solid try.

mmmeff 8y ago
Exactly. I agree, not because of vanity, but because if a language fails to market itself well, it's probably not going to succeed in becoming adopted, and adoption breeds support in the form of open source libraries and job prospects. Most devs don't have the time to pick up esoteric hobbyist languages because they're clever.
fnordsensei 8y ago
Additionally, ALL marketing/landing pages should back up their claims with evidence. It doesn't have to be much, but there's definitely bonus points where a short motivation is provided with links to further reading. It doesn't have to be hard evidence exactly, but if you're claiming that something is easy, fast, "modern", what makes it so? I concede that you can get away with it to some extent by splicing in "intended to be" in the sentence, but it still places on the visitor the burden of figuring out the "why" behind the marketing.
- bjz_ 8y ago
  Oh yeah! Definitely agree with this!
pmontra 8y ago
Yeah. One thing I don't do when looking at new languages is downloading PDF files. Actually, having documentation as PDF is a big alarm bell. I think about myself browsing PDF files if I ever end up using the language and flee in terror. Why ever invest time in formatting documentation to generate PDF? Mercury also has HTML documentation, which is the way to go. However it's missing code samples in the home page and it's not like everybody knows about Mercury. Compare to https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ which instead is pretty well known and still has code to show at the very beginning of the home page.
- z3t4 8y ago
  Some people prefer to print it out and read it on paper. But if you prefer to read it as a web document, why not convert the PDF to HTML !? I understand there are so many programming languages to choose from so you need to filter them out somehow, but I do not think filtering by documentation formatting is a good heuristic.
  - pmontra 8y ago
    A language whose only documentation is paper or PDF (it's not the case of Mercury) is not a language that's going to thrive in this age. It's probably a waste of time to get involved with it. This is why I use documentation format as heuristic.
z3t4 8y ago
I think the problem is you think everyone else know as much as you do, meanwhile the average programmer are not writing compilers and certainly don't have 30 years of field experience doing so. You imagine any serious programmer would look at your implementation and see where it's better then existing solutions, meanwhile the average programmer is blissful of not knowing the edge cases or at what scale her current tools fail. So sadly you should spend as least 50% if not more of your time at marketing and communications.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
Mercury is probably developed and maintained by a very small, even single-perrson team, at this point, so there's most likely an issue of how to best allocate resources. Perhaps the language designers just can't afford a sleek, web-based documentation system, such as other languages have. Let's also not forget that, just because someone understands how to design and implement a really cool programming language, doesn't mean they understand how to perform "marketing and good communication". And vice-versa. These are often very different skillsets, like designing a racing car and actually racing it. Again, it's not a given that a small team will have both those sets of skills readily at hand. Which of course, can stunt its growth, further compounding the problem.
- gus_massa 8y ago
  I don't mind that it has or not a sleek documentation or just plain html. I just want one or two snippets of code in the main page. I tried reading the docs (in the html version), and the first example is in the fourth or fifth page.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
    There is a tutorial in pdf format, that pretty much starts with hello world: https://www.mercurylang.org/documentation/papers/book.pdf https://www.mercurylang.org/documentation/papers/book.pdf :- module hello. :- interface. :- import_module io. :- pred main(io::di, io::uo) is det. :- implementation. main(IOState_in, IOState_out) :- io.write_string("Hello, World!\n", IOState_in, IOState_out). Is the problem that this is pdf, rather than html?
    - gus_massa 8y ago
      I usually try the html version first if available (and I asume that the pdf version is equal).

by bjz_ 8y ago

mmmeff 8y ago

Exactly. I agree, not because of vanity, but because if a language fails to market itself well, it's probably not going to succeed in becoming adopted, and adoption breeds support in the form of open source libraries and job prospects. Most devs don't have the time to pick up esoteric hobbyist languages because they're clever.

fnordsensei 8y ago

Additionally, ALL marketing/landing pages should back up their claims with evidence. It doesn't have to be much, but there's definitely bonus points where a short motivation is provided with links to further reading. It doesn't have to be hard evidence exactly, but if you're claiming that something is easy, fast, "modern", what makes it so? I concede that you can get away with it to some extent by splicing in "intended to be" in the sentence, but it still places on the visitor the burden of figuring out the "why" behind the marketing.

bjz_ 8y ago
Oh yeah! Definitely agree with this!

pmontra 8y ago

Yeah. One thing I don't do when looking at new languages is downloading PDF files. Actually, having documentation as PDF is a big alarm bell. I think about myself browsing PDF files if I ever end up using the language and flee in terror. Why ever invest time in formatting documentation to generate PDF? Mercury also has HTML documentation, which is the way to go. However it's missing code samples in the home page and it's not like everybody knows about Mercury. Compare to https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ which instead is pretty well known and still has code to show at the very beginning of the home page.

z3t4 8y ago
Some people prefer to print it out and read it on paper. But if you prefer to read it as a web document, why not convert the PDF to HTML !? I understand there are so many programming languages to choose from so you need to filter them out somehow, but I do not think filtering by documentation formatting is a good heuristic.
- pmontra 8y ago
  A language whose only documentation is paper or PDF (it's not the case of Mercury) is not a language that's going to thrive in this age. It's probably a waste of time to get involved with it. This is why I use documentation format as heuristic.

z3t4 8y ago

I think the problem is you think everyone else know as much as you do, meanwhile the average programmer are not writing compilers and certainly don't have 30 years of field experience doing so. You imagine any serious programmer would look at your implementation and see where it's better then existing solutions, meanwhile the average programmer is blissful of not knowing the edge cases or at what scale her current tools fail. So sadly you should spend as least 50% if not more of your time at marketing and communications.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

Mercury is probably developed and maintained by a very small, even single-perrson team, at this point, so there's most likely an issue of how to best allocate resources. Perhaps the language designers just can't afford a sleek, web-based documentation system, such as other languages have. Let's also not forget that, just because someone understands how to design and implement a really cool programming language, doesn't mean they understand how to perform "marketing and good communication". And vice-versa. These are often very different skillsets, like designing a racing car and actually racing it. Again, it's not a given that a small team will have both those sets of skills readily at hand. Which of course, can stunt its growth, further compounding the problem.

gus_massa 8y ago
I don't mind that it has or not a sleek documentation or just plain html. I just want one or two snippets of code in the main page. I tried reading the docs (in the html version), and the first example is in the fourth or fifth page.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  There is a tutorial in pdf format, that pretty much starts with hello world: https://www.mercurylang.org/documentation/papers/book.pdf https://www.mercurylang.org/documentation/papers/book.pdf :- module hello. :- interface. :- import_module io. :- pred main(io::di, io::uo) is det. :- implementation. main(IOState_in, IOState_out) :- io.write_string("Hello, World!\n", IOState_in, IOState_out). Is the problem that this is pdf, rather than html?
  - gus_massa 8y ago
    I usually try the html version first if available (and I asume that the pdf version is equal).