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Just that F# other than C# is a bad example in that argument. There is a pretty independent F# Foundation with even the lead Microsoft / F# personell advocating

by oaiey 6y ago

Just that F# other than C# is a bad example in that argument. There is a pretty independent F# Foundation with even the lead Microsoft / F# personell advocating it.

teddyh 6y ago
Nothing which was initially developed inside a large corporation has a reasonable chance of becoming truly independent. The only example I can think of is Unix and C, and that’s only because AT&T was (for complicated reasons) legally restricted from selling it as a product, and the project was taken over by various other actors in both business and academia. But C#, F#, Go, Swift, Dart, etc.? They are initially populated by developers from a specific company, and will, from the start, have that company’s culture and goals implicitly ingrained. No outside developer will be able to climb the ladder and gain any appreciable mindshare to significantly affect this; the direction is set from the start and cannot be altered as long as the original developers (or their successors from the same company) are mostly still there. To get back to my example, Unix only really started to thrive once it was taken over by the BSD developers. (I have written about this before on here. First six years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8733705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8733705) and again about two years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370067).)
- nojito 6y ago
  Kafka? Airflow? Javascript? The list goes on.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    The only one of those that I have heard of is Javascript, and that was initially implemented by Netscape, but the language was then taken over by the industry at large as Netscape’s market share dwindled. Javascript is also unusual in that it had a specific and restrictive design goal, and a very short initial development phase before the language was mostly frozen. This meant that not a lot of Netscape culture could be put into the language, partly because the language itself was small, but mostly, I think, because of the very fast initial development by a small team (a single person over a period of days, IIRC). So, yes, even though I don’t like Javascript as a programming language, I would not shy away from it merely because of its corporate roots.
    - nojito 6y ago
      You are just wrong and speaking like it's still the 90s or 2000s. I just mentioned 3 very popular and effectively best in class technologies that started at a corporation and now have robust open communities supporting them.
      - teddyh 6y ago
        Please name one thing I wrote which is wrong. I mean, I agreed with you about Javascript, and gave a lengthy explanation why, even though you gave no motivation. I have not heard of the other two, so obviously I can’t comment about them.
- Seirdy 6y ago
  - Kotlin (Jetbrains) - Chez Scheme (Cisco) - Erlang (Ericsson) - Rust (Mozilla) - Java (Sun Microsystems, Oracle) The above examples show languages that outgrew the companies that developed them. Typescript might follow a similar path in the future.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    I don’t know about Kotlin. Scheme was already a thing before Chez Scheme, and Scheme in general has quite a lot of implementations, so Chez Scheme is probably mostly safe, merely because of that. Erlang I don’t know much about. Rust was created by the semi-large Mozilla Foundation, but Mozilla had mostly benevolent goals and designs for the language, so that one is probably OK. Java was initially made popular since people trusted Sun Microsystems, but then Sun was 1. destroyed by market forces, and 2. bought by Oracle. And Oracle keeps an even tighter iron-fisted grip around Java than ever, according to what I hear. So I wouldn’t touch Java with a 10 foot pole either.

by oaiey 6y ago

Just that F# other than C# is a bad example in that argument. There is a pretty independent F# Foundation with even the lead Microsoft / F# personell advocating it.

teddyh 6y ago

Nothing which was initially developed inside a large corporation has a reasonable chance of becoming truly independent. The only example I can think of is Unix and C, and that’s only because AT&T was (for complicated reasons) legally restricted from selling it as a product, and the project was taken over by various other actors in both business and academia. But C#, F#, Go, Swift, Dart, etc.? They are initially populated by developers from a specific company, and will, from the start, have that company’s culture and goals implicitly ingrained. No outside developer will be able to climb the ladder and gain any appreciable mindshare to significantly affect this; the direction is set from the start and cannot be altered as long as the original developers (or their successors from the same company) are mostly still there. To get back to my example, Unix only really started to thrive once it was taken over by the BSD developers. (I have written about this before on here. First six years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8733705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8733705) and again about two years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370067).)

nojito 6y ago
Kafka? Airflow? Javascript? The list goes on.
- teddyh 6y ago
  The only one of those that I have heard of is Javascript, and that was initially implemented by Netscape, but the language was then taken over by the industry at large as Netscape’s market share dwindled. Javascript is also unusual in that it had a specific and restrictive design goal, and a very short initial development phase before the language was mostly frozen. This meant that not a lot of Netscape culture could be put into the language, partly because the language itself was small, but mostly, I think, because of the very fast initial development by a small team (a single person over a period of days, IIRC). So, yes, even though I don’t like Javascript as a programming language, I would not shy away from it merely because of its corporate roots.
  - nojito 6y ago
    You are just wrong and speaking like it's still the 90s or 2000s. I just mentioned 3 very popular and effectively best in class technologies that started at a corporation and now have robust open communities supporting them.
    - teddyh 6y ago
      Please name one thing I wrote which is wrong. I mean, I agreed with you about Javascript, and gave a lengthy explanation why, even though you gave no motivation. I have not heard of the other two, so obviously I can’t comment about them.
Seirdy 6y ago
- Kotlin (Jetbrains) - Chez Scheme (Cisco) - Erlang (Ericsson) - Rust (Mozilla) - Java (Sun Microsystems, Oracle) The above examples show languages that outgrew the companies that developed them. Typescript might follow a similar path in the future.
- teddyh 6y ago
  I don’t know about Kotlin. Scheme was already a thing before Chez Scheme, and Scheme in general has quite a lot of implementations, so Chez Scheme is probably mostly safe, merely because of that. Erlang I don’t know much about. Rust was created by the semi-large Mozilla Foundation, but Mozilla had mostly benevolent goals and designs for the language, so that one is probably OK. Java was initially made popular since people trusted Sun Microsystems, but then Sun was 1. destroyed by market forces, and 2. bought by Oracle. And Oracle keeps an even tighter iron-fisted grip around Java than ever, according to what I hear. So I wouldn’t touch Java with a 10 foot pole either.