3 ms·

So then, why is K less popular than pretty much any other language? Because people are stupid? Uninformed? There's a lack of PR-minded people working with K? Wh

So then, why is K less popular than pretty much any other language? Because people are stupid? Uninformed? There's a lack of PR-minded people working with K? What exactly is your theory? It's funny that a language this flawless is slightly less popular than S or D or pretty much any other one-letter language. There must be something that makes it unappealing for the masses of programmers - what is it?

vnorilo 7y ago
Masses love javascript. Just saying. More seriously, core language quality is not the primary driver of language choice. Otherwise we'd all be using something with S-expressions, Hindley-Milner, dependent and linear types. ducks
- virgilp 7y ago
  Javascript must've done _something_ right, no? Yes I know it's bad from "language design" perspective, but we all know what it did right: it was embedded out-of-the-box on a very popular platform (the browser). So, there is an explanation. Do note that I didn't claim "popularity == quality". I'm not even claiming K is bad!!! Just that it's strange for something so clearly superior to everything else to be such a niche language. Surely it must have downsides...
  - vnorilo 7y ago
    Why is it strange? Think of languages like Lisp, Smalltalk, Haskell. You may not find them on top of TIOBE, but their innovations do trickle down to mainstream, indicating that the designers of mainstream languages find them worthwhile. Array languages are very much poised to do the same, if they did not already: numpy is essentially a poor (and verbose) man's array language embedded in python. Or consider Matlab.
    - virgilp 7y ago
      > "A LISP programmer knows the value of everything and the cost of nothing." Here, a very old quote that tells you directly what is wrong with FP - the performance on old hardware sucked. For a very long while compilers/interpreters were not good enough. The cost/benefit equation changed in recent years, and sure enough, FP ideas are becoming mainstream. Again, I'm not saying that array languages don't have fundamentally great ideas. I'm saying that articles like this one do them no favor - they're just smug rants. Show the world you understand the downsides, and you get a better chance of promoting the upsides.
      - kick 7y ago
        (k is competitive with C by most measures, and most k programs are faster than the equivalent C programs.)
kick 7y ago
k costs $20,000 per-core (less accurate now than it used to be but I'm pretty sure it's still true for commercial uses). It has a billion-dollar company based entirely around it (Kx/FD) and a smaller multimillion one, so it worked out well, I guess. J is free, but J has never had an advertising budget, and was only freed recently. APL's current leading implementation is really bad in comparison to how nice the language used to be, and just as proprietary. It was also significantly nicer to input back when APL keyboards existed and typeballs did as well. Very few people strike gold and then have the willingness to not sell it at market-rate. Unfortunately, most people implementing APL are very aware of the rate. And it's high.
- virgilp 7y ago
  A language doesn't cost... the environment might. Why did nobody pick up on the ideas? C# is not inspired by K, Go is not, Swift is not, Rust is not, Clojure is not... I mean, take any big or small company that decided "we need a new programming language" - I'm not aware of many taking inspiration from K. I get it, there are people who love K, and are productive in it. And I'm not even claiming the ideas of K are inherently bad! But you know, when the rest of the world "doesn't get it", _maybe_ the reason is not that the rest of the world is dumb? Articles like this one do K no favor, IMO.. they might "feel good" but they IMO don't prove that K programmers are superior beings who reached enlightenment - they prove the exact opposite, lack of understanding the rest of the world. It's fine to say "I'm quirky and it's fine, this makes me special". It's wrong to say "The rest of the world is quirky, they don't share my niche preferences".
  - iateanapple 7y ago
    > But you know, when the rest of the world "doesn't get it", _maybe_ the reason is not that the rest of the world is dumb? Look at the kind of replies you get on every hn thread on APL/J/K - the majority of the negative comments around readability are emotional/gut level responses. People aren’t trying to understand K examples for a couple of hours and failing... they are making snap judgements based on their experiences in other languages. That is hard to overcome.
  - 7y ago
iateanapple 7y ago
> So then, why is K less popular than pretty much any other language? K is pretty polarizing and goes against many established “best practices” we get hammered into us every day as software devs. Just look at the knee-jerk negative reactions on hn posts every time the APL family is mentioned. We tried it in my team and a lot of people who were pretty productive in it still hated the experience.
dang 7y ago
Chance. Or, to put it another way: history.

vnorilo 7y ago

Masses love javascript. Just saying. More seriously, core language quality is not the primary driver of language choice. Otherwise we'd all be using something with S-expressions, Hindley-Milner, dependent and linear types. ducks

virgilp 7y ago
Javascript must've done _something_ right, no? Yes I know it's bad from "language design" perspective, but we all know what it did right: it was embedded out-of-the-box on a very popular platform (the browser). So, there is an explanation. Do note that I didn't claim "popularity == quality". I'm not even claiming K is bad!!! Just that it's strange for something so clearly superior to everything else to be such a niche language. Surely it must have downsides...
- vnorilo 7y ago
  Why is it strange? Think of languages like Lisp, Smalltalk, Haskell. You may not find them on top of TIOBE, but their innovations do trickle down to mainstream, indicating that the designers of mainstream languages find them worthwhile. Array languages are very much poised to do the same, if they did not already: numpy is essentially a poor (and verbose) man's array language embedded in python. Or consider Matlab.
  - virgilp 7y ago
    > "A LISP programmer knows the value of everything and the cost of nothing." Here, a very old quote that tells you directly what is wrong with FP - the performance on old hardware sucked. For a very long while compilers/interpreters were not good enough. The cost/benefit equation changed in recent years, and sure enough, FP ideas are becoming mainstream. Again, I'm not saying that array languages don't have fundamentally great ideas. I'm saying that articles like this one do them no favor - they're just smug rants. Show the world you understand the downsides, and you get a better chance of promoting the upsides.
    - kick 7y ago
      (k is competitive with C by most measures, and most k programs are faster than the equivalent C programs.)

kick 7y ago

k costs $20,000 per-core (less accurate now than it used to be but I'm pretty sure it's still true for commercial uses). It has a billion-dollar company based entirely around it (Kx/FD) and a smaller multimillion one, so it worked out well, I guess. J is free, but J has never had an advertising budget, and was only freed recently. APL's current leading implementation is really bad in comparison to how nice the language used to be, and just as proprietary. It was also significantly nicer to input back when APL keyboards existed and typeballs did as well. Very few people strike gold and then have the willingness to not sell it at market-rate. Unfortunately, most people implementing APL are very aware of the rate. And it's high.

virgilp 7y ago
A language doesn't cost... the environment might. Why did nobody pick up on the ideas? C# is not inspired by K, Go is not, Swift is not, Rust is not, Clojure is not... I mean, take any big or small company that decided "we need a new programming language" - I'm not aware of many taking inspiration from K. I get it, there are people who love K, and are productive in it. And I'm not even claiming the ideas of K are inherently bad! But you know, when the rest of the world "doesn't get it", _maybe_ the reason is not that the rest of the world is dumb? Articles like this one do K no favor, IMO.. they might "feel good" but they IMO don't prove that K programmers are superior beings who reached enlightenment - they prove the exact opposite, lack of understanding the rest of the world. It's fine to say "I'm quirky and it's fine, this makes me special". It's wrong to say "The rest of the world is quirky, they don't share my niche preferences".
- iateanapple 7y ago
  > But you know, when the rest of the world "doesn't get it", _maybe_ the reason is not that the rest of the world is dumb? Look at the kind of replies you get on every hn thread on APL/J/K - the majority of the negative comments around readability are emotional/gut level responses. People aren’t trying to understand K examples for a couple of hours and failing... they are making snap judgements based on their experiences in other languages. That is hard to overcome.
- 7y ago

iateanapple 7y ago

> So then, why is K less popular than pretty much any other language? K is pretty polarizing and goes against many established “best practices” we get hammered into us every day as software devs. Just look at the knee-jerk negative reactions on hn posts every time the APL family is mentioned. We tried it in my team and a lot of people who were pretty productive in it still hated the experience.

dang 7y ago

Chance. Or, to put it another way: history.