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Curious why someone wouldn't like Kelley- Is it because he shoots down feature additions a lot?
by drcode 5y ago
Curious why someone wouldn't like Kelley- Is it because he shoots down feature additions a lot?
- skohan 5y agoI don't know much about Kelley, but if the goal is to create a "C replacement", aggressively keeping the language surface area small seems like a reasonable way to go.
- drcode 5y agoExactly, this is why he sometimes comes off as a jerk, because he tells people stuff like "No, you can't add your virtual function table feature to Zig, OOP programming is a bad idea in a systems language."
- matheusmoreira 5y agoIndeed. In this video he explains the reason why he made those choices: https://youtu.be/Gv2I7qTux7g?t=120 https://youtu.be/Gv2I7qTux7g?t=120 All these programming language features require a lot of machinery, complicating the binary interfaces of the resulting software and preventing code reuse.
- v8dev123 5y agoSimple, small languages getting complicated when used in large applications while complex languages become simple and easier when used in large applications.
- skohan 5y agoThat mostly seems correct, but Zig will be an interesting one to watch due to the approach of having powerful compiletime execution. I.e. Zig doesn't have generics in the traditional sense, but you can get them by writing normal code which creates types for you at compiletime. The promise would be that you can get more advanced features without adding complexity to the language, i.e. like in Rust where you have to basically understand the AST in depth to be able to write macros. We'll see if it pans out. Also for instance Go has been able to stay relevant while staying very small. Complex languages can help with complex projects if there is a good program structure, but one advantage of simple languages is there is only so much of a mess which can be made if developers go a bit off the reservation.
- dnautics 5y agoYeah this is not my experience. Enterprise distributed systems are much easier in erlang and elixir, which are simple languages, over java, which is not.
- v8dev123 5y agoThey are functional languages. There is difference.
- blacktriangle 5y agoAnd even if you don't think that's right, we already have the large-surface area systems programing language experiment in Rust. Aren't we better off with Rust and Zig exploring clearly different paths for a C replacement than both of them trying the same things?
- v8dev123 5y agoHe is childish. He had record breaking flame war in HN.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoWhat was it about? Link?
- suby 5y agoI'm assuming that he's referring to this thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20229632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20229632
- klyrs 5y agoA key feature of a "flame war" is long chains of responses. By not responding to amedvednikov, AndyKelley did not participate in a flame war on that post. It was a call-out. His criticism was quite relevant at the time, because the article was a false release announcement, and the project was garnering a lot of attention (and taking people's money) by making outlandish claims, with (at the time) nothing to show for it.
- v8dev123 5y agoThere were many posts both in HN and outside HN including Github, Reddit, Twitter. His criticism is not constructive. He had Linus style comments.
- klyrs 5y agoThere is no such thing as "constructive criticism" of suspected fraud -- there were a bunch of red flags, and AK was not remotely alone in sounding the alarm. Do you have constructive criticism to offer, is AK still badgering AN, or are you just airing grievances about 2 year-old drama?
- 5y ago