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Go - OK, it has one implementation (open-source), but it's backed by one big player (Google) and used by many others... also the simplicity at core design decis

by nnq 7y ago

Go - OK, it has one implementation (open-source), but it's backed by one big player (Google) and used by many others... also the simplicity at core design decisions sound like the kind of choices that would make an alternative compiler easier to implement than for other languages Rust - pretty fast growing open-source community despite only one implementation... but yeah I'm sort of worried that Rust is a "hard to implement" kind of language with maybe a not high enough bus factor... similar worries for Julia too But tbh I'm not drawn much to either Go and Rust for other reasons - Go is too verbose for my taste, no way to write denser code that highlights the logic instead of the plumbing, and it has a "dumb" type system, Rust seems a really bad choice for rapid prototyping and iteration which is what I care about now. EDIT+: glad to know that Go has multiple implementations in fact, pardon my ignorance!

hobofan 7y ago
> with maybe a not high enough bus factor I'm assuming you don't mean the traditional bus factor, but one of alternative implementations? Rust (and from what I can tell after short research Julia at least partially too) has quite a big development team that is supported by many different companies with no benevolent dictator, so I don't see a big bus factor risk.
- karmakaze 7y ago
  I generally read bus factor as having few who fully understand a codebase written in said language so if they were to be hit by a bus you'd lose ability not easy to hire.
  - karmakaze 7y ago
    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
- ChrisRackauckas 7y ago
  Julia actually has a pretty high bus factor in comparison to most other Github projects. This was demonstrated during Heather Miller's (of Scala Fame) talk at JuliaCon 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_743P8XuvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_743P8XuvA
cultofmetatron 7y ago
rust is a fantastic language that helps me avoid a lot of problems in runtime but I will concur that its a terrible language for prototyping and its not trying to be. Its a language for building systems that need to be fast and reliable for years.
jimbokun 7y ago
"... but yeah I'm sort of worried that Rust is a "hard to implement" kind of language with maybe a not high enough bus factor... similar worries for Julia too" Which is fair, but they seem like the kind of language where the compiler or run time is the really important part of the language, so it might make sense to have multiple implementations. Rust without the lifetimes implementation, and Julia without the highly dynamic but high performance run time, aren't worth much.

by nnq 7y ago

hobofan 7y ago

> with maybe a not high enough bus factor I'm assuming you don't mean the traditional bus factor, but one of alternative implementations? Rust (and from what I can tell after short research Julia at least partially too) has quite a big development team that is supported by many different companies with no benevolent dictator, so I don't see a big bus factor risk.

karmakaze 7y ago
I generally read bus factor as having few who fully understand a codebase written in said language so if they were to be hit by a bus you'd lose ability not easy to hire.
- karmakaze 7y ago
  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
ChrisRackauckas 7y ago
Julia actually has a pretty high bus factor in comparison to most other Github projects. This was demonstrated during Heather Miller's (of Scala Fame) talk at JuliaCon 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_743P8XuvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_743P8XuvA

cultofmetatron 7y ago

rust is a fantastic language that helps me avoid a lot of problems in runtime but I will concur that its a terrible language for prototyping and its not trying to be. Its a language for building systems that need to be fast and reliable for years.

jimbokun 7y ago

"... but yeah I'm sort of worried that Rust is a "hard to implement" kind of language with maybe a not high enough bus factor... similar worries for Julia too" Which is fair, but they seem like the kind of language where the compiler or run time is the really important part of the language, so it might make sense to have multiple implementations. Rust without the lifetimes implementation, and Julia without the highly dynamic but high performance run time, aren't worth much.