5 ms·

I would say that searching for the answers to these problems in a new language is going to result in heartbreak. It is likely to not happen and if it does that

I would say that searching for the answers to these problems in a new language is going to result in heartbreak. It is likely to not happen and if it does that language will be barren territory where you have what you want architecturally but nothing else. I think the goals are great but addressing them at the architecture level is better, especially with tools to really take advantage of that modularity. Something like this: https://github.com/LiveAsynchronousVisualizedArchitecture/lava https://github.com/LiveAsynchronousVisualizedArchitecture/la...

jerf 7y ago
That is largely why I'm not particular happy to have this language coalescing in my head. It's rather against my will. (And I'm actually pretty decent at deliberately not thinking about things; I know, for instance, that you don't sit here and actively fight it, that only makes it worse. You have to let it passively flow through you and then out again, like when you screw up meditating.) I know what it takes to make a successful language and that I basically have no chance. Not to mention it's probably more than my entire lifetime's spare time to implement something that does enough of it to be usable. If it doesn't just go away in another couple of weeks, I think I'm going to sacrifice an evening or two to writing out the ideas and hope that satisfies my subconscious that something came of it and it's OK to drop the idea now. I mean, in some sense, the best case is to publish it, get it on to Hacker News, let it go infect someone who does have the time to deal with it, and then use their language when they're done. I'm hoping perhaps even typing this much may do the trick...
- BubRoss 7y ago
  You should really take a look at that link, not everything needs to be solved at the language level.
  - jerf 7y ago
    Somewhat relatedly, there's already a section on "culture", something I think that is sometimes overlooked by language creators. The shape of the initial libraries can shape the entire ecosystem of a language, even when the language itself is technically capable of supporting a different culture. There's a lot of winds blowing against a new language, but this is one of the rare winds blowing for it; it can literally be easier to write a new language from scratch and boot up a new culture than it can be to change an existing culture. For example, it wouldn't matter if C++ imported every Rust feature, even for the sake of argument to the point where this new (terrible monstrosity of a) compiler could literally compile all current Rust code. The result still wouldn't be "Rust", or able to "kill" Rust, because the sheer inertia of C++ culture (or, for a language this big, "cultures") would simply never produce the sort of code that you see in real Rust.

jerf 7y ago

That is largely why I'm not particular happy to have this language coalescing in my head. It's rather against my will. (And I'm actually pretty decent at deliberately not thinking about things; I know, for instance, that you don't sit here and actively fight it, that only makes it worse. You have to let it passively flow through you and then out again, like when you screw up meditating.) I know what it takes to make a successful language and that I basically have no chance. Not to mention it's probably more than my entire lifetime's spare time to implement something that does enough of it to be usable. If it doesn't just go away in another couple of weeks, I think I'm going to sacrifice an evening or two to writing out the ideas and hope that satisfies my subconscious that something came of it and it's OK to drop the idea now. I mean, in some sense, the best case is to publish it, get it on to Hacker News, let it go infect someone who does have the time to deal with it, and then use their language when they're done. I'm hoping perhaps even typing this much may do the trick...

BubRoss 7y ago
You should really take a look at that link, not everything needs to be solved at the language level.
- jerf 7y ago
  Somewhat relatedly, there's already a section on "culture", something I think that is sometimes overlooked by language creators. The shape of the initial libraries can shape the entire ecosystem of a language, even when the language itself is technically capable of supporting a different culture. There's a lot of winds blowing against a new language, but this is one of the rare winds blowing for it; it can literally be easier to write a new language from scratch and boot up a new culture than it can be to change an existing culture. For example, it wouldn't matter if C++ imported every Rust feature, even for the sake of argument to the point where this new (terrible monstrosity of a) compiler could literally compile all current Rust code. The result still wouldn't be "Rust", or able to "kill" Rust, because the sheer inertia of C++ culture (or, for a language this big, "cultures") would simply never produce the sort of code that you see in real Rust.