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I was also intrigued by Pony -- but lost interest when the company backing it shut down. I don't think it was due to monetization though, I think it formed a fo

I was also intrigued by Pony -- but lost interest when the company backing it shut down. I don't think it was due to monetization though, I think it formed a foundation, but do not quote me on that. I only know of one (there may be others) that constantly talk about how they're using Pony -- Wallaroo[1][2]. I think they're still actively working on it, based on their Github[3]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15558051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15558051 [2] https://www.wallaroolabs.com/ https://www.wallaroolabs.com/ [3] https://github.com/WallarooLabs/wallaroo https://github.com/WallarooLabs/wallaroo

spooneybarger 7y ago
Hi Pony core team member here and also, VP of Engineering at Wallaroo Labs. Wallaroo Labs is the most vocal user of Pony. There are a few others who are playing around with Pony and we hear about from time to time, but we are still in the very early stages as a language. It's definitely a great time to get involved with Pony if you are interested in guiding the direction of the language. Re "the company backing it". You would be referring to Causality. They shut down quite some time ago. The general belief with Causality was that they would be able to get folks in finance to pay for Pony development and support given that an early version of Pony started at a large bank in London and the open source version was a vast improvement. That didn't happen and so Causality had no path forward. Sylvan Clebsch, the "inventor" of Pony, has since gone on to work at Microsoft Research. He's a member of the Pony core team that he, myself, and Darach Ennis formed as Causality was shutting down. Since that time, we've added a couple people to the core team, lost some, and added a bunch of contributors and worked on making steady progress pushing Pony forward. The Pony core team isn't a foundation but we are on Open Collective and are quite happy to take donations (that at this time, go towards paying for hosting costs and whatnot) https://opencollective.com/ponyc https://opencollective.com/ponyc We also have a Zulip community that folks can stop by, chat, and learn more: https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/ https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/
- tzjmetron 7y ago
  I really wish someone from the Pony community would write a book. The official tutorials are nice, but the parts on the various reference capabilities onwards is extremely confusing (and sort of bare). I know it's a small community, and there really is no official corporate backing, but right now I see the lack of good learning resources as the biggest obstacle, and we have to admit that Pony has a very steep learning curve. I really do love whatever little Pony that I have explored, and the compile times are superb compared to something like Rust, and the generated executables seem to be quite fast as well.
  - spooneybarger 7y ago
    Re: a book. The most likely candidate would be me and it's 100% certain I do not have the time right now. We've done several attempts at getting other folks to contribute more in that area and it's really hard to find people who are interested. Finding folks to contribute to most open source projects is hard in general. Finding folks to contribute to documentation, learning resources and what not is really hard. If anyone reads this and gets inspired to try and help, ping me on the Pony Zulip and I'd be happy to assist in a general "mentoring/guiding" capacity. https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/ https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/
    - tzjmetron 7y ago
      Yes, that's what I feared as well. If I had had some solid experience with Pony already, I'd volunteer in a heartbeat. Still, many thanks for helping keep Pony alive, Sean!

spooneybarger 7y ago

Hi Pony core team member here and also, VP of Engineering at Wallaroo Labs. Wallaroo Labs is the most vocal user of Pony. There are a few others who are playing around with Pony and we hear about from time to time, but we are still in the very early stages as a language. It's definitely a great time to get involved with Pony if you are interested in guiding the direction of the language. Re "the company backing it". You would be referring to Causality. They shut down quite some time ago. The general belief with Causality was that they would be able to get folks in finance to pay for Pony development and support given that an early version of Pony started at a large bank in London and the open source version was a vast improvement. That didn't happen and so Causality had no path forward. Sylvan Clebsch, the "inventor" of Pony, has since gone on to work at Microsoft Research. He's a member of the Pony core team that he, myself, and Darach Ennis formed as Causality was shutting down. Since that time, we've added a couple people to the core team, lost some, and added a bunch of contributors and worked on making steady progress pushing Pony forward. The Pony core team isn't a foundation but we are on Open Collective and are quite happy to take donations (that at this time, go towards paying for hosting costs and whatnot) https://opencollective.com/ponyc https://opencollective.com/ponyc We also have a Zulip community that folks can stop by, chat, and learn more: https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/ https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/

tzjmetron 7y ago
I really wish someone from the Pony community would write a book. The official tutorials are nice, but the parts on the various reference capabilities onwards is extremely confusing (and sort of bare). I know it's a small community, and there really is no official corporate backing, but right now I see the lack of good learning resources as the biggest obstacle, and we have to admit that Pony has a very steep learning curve. I really do love whatever little Pony that I have explored, and the compile times are superb compared to something like Rust, and the generated executables seem to be quite fast as well.
- spooneybarger 7y ago
  Re: a book. The most likely candidate would be me and it's 100% certain I do not have the time right now. We've done several attempts at getting other folks to contribute more in that area and it's really hard to find people who are interested. Finding folks to contribute to most open source projects is hard in general. Finding folks to contribute to documentation, learning resources and what not is really hard. If anyone reads this and gets inspired to try and help, ping me on the Pony Zulip and I'd be happy to assist in a general "mentoring/guiding" capacity. https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/ https://ponylang.zulipchat.com/
  - tzjmetron 7y ago
    Yes, that's what I feared as well. If I had had some solid experience with Pony already, I'd volunteer in a heartbeat. Still, many thanks for helping keep Pony alive, Sean!