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I think the world was almost tolerable before Go and Rust came along. We already had too many languages even before those two, but at least there was a clear le

I think the world was almost tolerable before Go and Rust came along. We already had too many languages even before those two, but at least there was a clear leader: Java. Nowadays the market is completely fragmented.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
What's your issue? How exactly do more languages harm you? Or harm anyone? Is choice bad for some reason?
- lolive 6y ago
  I think all languages do suffer from their initial design. And spend 5-years iteration to circumventing them. Java will have proper asynchronous management in 5 years, Go will have generics in 5 years, Rust will have a garbage collector variant in 5 years, Python and JavaScript will have full multithreading in 5 years. In the end, no language is catching the whole problematic and solve it at once. So there is a programming language fatigue. PS: when I say that things happen within a timeframe of 5 years, it includes the time to deliver the feature in the language, and people to massively adopt it, and new developped code to include it in mass.
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    Every new language is an attempt to fix some problems in the existing languages but at the same time be simple to learn and use. But the problem-space of programming is very complex. So while a new language does something better than some existing languages the language designers do not foresee all problems that may arise in actual use. Maybe a way to proceed would be to have a common set of code which every new language would try to rewrite, and thus see how much better it is, or is not, than the existing ones. Comparative analysis.
  - WClayFerguson 6y ago
    Exactly right. Each new language thinks they've simplified and solved problems, but in the end they end up having to solve the same old problems that have already been solved decades earlier lots of times.
- WClayFerguson 6y ago
  The ability share code is critical. For people to share and cooperate it's much better to have fewer languages, than 100s. Companies are spending billions each year because of having to translate from one language to another.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    Rebuilding similar functionality maybe but who's actually porting between languages? Plus code can already be shared with various bindings. Lately there's been a big push with "microservices" or generally networked architectures so different components built in entirely different stacks can still interoperate just fine.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

What's your issue? How exactly do more languages harm you? Or harm anyone? Is choice bad for some reason?

lolive 6y ago
I think all languages do suffer from their initial design. And spend 5-years iteration to circumventing them. Java will have proper asynchronous management in 5 years, Go will have generics in 5 years, Rust will have a garbage collector variant in 5 years, Python and JavaScript will have full multithreading in 5 years. In the end, no language is catching the whole problematic and solve it at once. So there is a programming language fatigue. PS: when I say that things happen within a timeframe of 5 years, it includes the time to deliver the feature in the language, and people to massively adopt it, and new developped code to include it in mass.
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  Every new language is an attempt to fix some problems in the existing languages but at the same time be simple to learn and use. But the problem-space of programming is very complex. So while a new language does something better than some existing languages the language designers do not foresee all problems that may arise in actual use. Maybe a way to proceed would be to have a common set of code which every new language would try to rewrite, and thus see how much better it is, or is not, than the existing ones. Comparative analysis.
- WClayFerguson 6y ago
  Exactly right. Each new language thinks they've simplified and solved problems, but in the end they end up having to solve the same old problems that have already been solved decades earlier lots of times.
WClayFerguson 6y ago
The ability share code is critical. For people to share and cooperate it's much better to have fewer languages, than 100s. Companies are spending billions each year because of having to translate from one language to another.
- manigandham 6y ago
  Rebuilding similar functionality maybe but who's actually porting between languages? Plus code can already be shared with various bindings. Lately there's been a big push with "microservices" or generally networked architectures so different components built in entirely different stacks can still interoperate just fine.