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> but who wants to "design a compiler?" Lots of people, actually! Just in recent years, Golang, TypeScript, and Rust have shown there's plenty of demand for ne

> but who wants to "design a compiler?" Lots of people, actually! Just in recent years, Golang, TypeScript, and Rust have shown there's plenty of demand for new languages (compilers!) as developers and their requirements keep evolving. Given how expensive and time-consuming languages are to build and evolve, I'm honestly flabbergasted that we've seen 3+ languages come of age in the past decade and break into the mainstream.

nottorp 5y ago
Let's see... Go is someone at Google going up in the hierarchy by doing things that sound advanced. TypeScript is an attempt to make Javascript less of a mess. Dunno about Rust.
- phillipcarter 5y ago
  Not sure I understand your point. One of the major reasons why new languages emerge is to solve problems that the current incumbent language(s) cannot solve easily.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    > have shown there's plenty of demand for new languages Guess I'm disagreeing with "demand" in two of the cases. One because you don't know what office politics at Google led to Go being promoted. I strongly doubt it was to solve a problem, just someone with a lot of clout had a pet project. ... and second because it attempts to patch an existing trainwreck and isn't even a new language. Rust does seem well intentioned though so maybe there was a "demand".
    - phillipcarter 5y ago
      > I strongly doubt it was to solve a problem, just someone with a lot of clout had a pet project. I don't know office politics there, sure. But Go most definitely solved problems by having a language optimized for fast(er) builds and generally being a language you can write code without thinking too hard about and getting good runtime performance out of. Many languages start out as pet projects, but can often solve a real problem such that they see internal adoption. That adoption can grow for various reasons, and in some cases, end up creating a sociotechnical system where it's now a thing even though it never started out with the intention of being a thing. It's at this time that demand is a key driver behind adoption, new features, etc. Do you still feel that Go "doesn't count" with respect to demand? > second because it attempts to patch an existing trainwreck and isn't even a new language. Firstly, JavaScript is hardly a trainwreck of a language, considering how successful it has been with respect to adoption and having such an incredible ecosystem for developers to work in. I worked on a typed functional programming language for 5 years, so be aware that my statement isn't one of ignorance of other languages. But nonetheless, since this is really a philosophical question, what exactly makes up a new language to you? In TypeScript, the type system is Turing Complete. It's a novel type system; there is no other language with the same set of features and semantics associated with it. I can write very functional and type-heavy TypeScript today and it's really not reminiscent of JavaScript aside from a few syntactical elements. Do you still feel that it "doesn't count"?
      - nottorp 5y ago
        > Firstly, JavaScript is hardly a trainwreck of a language, considering how successful it has been with respect to adoption and having such an incredible ecosystem for developers to work in. Quality != popularity. Look at Hollywood. JS is only popular because it got built into every browser, not because there is anything "quality" about it. Thus, attempts to fix it. > In TypeScript, the type system is Turing Complete. Ok, I'm afraid the only thing I can think of now is the metastasis that C++ is in. But that's again a philosophical point of view, and I'm drifting on another tangent too.

nottorp 5y ago

Let's see... Go is someone at Google going up in the hierarchy by doing things that sound advanced. TypeScript is an attempt to make Javascript less of a mess. Dunno about Rust.

phillipcarter 5y ago
Not sure I understand your point. One of the major reasons why new languages emerge is to solve problems that the current incumbent language(s) cannot solve easily.
- nottorp 5y ago
  > have shown there's plenty of demand for new languages Guess I'm disagreeing with "demand" in two of the cases. One because you don't know what office politics at Google led to Go being promoted. I strongly doubt it was to solve a problem, just someone with a lot of clout had a pet project. ... and second because it attempts to patch an existing trainwreck and isn't even a new language. Rust does seem well intentioned though so maybe there was a "demand".
  - phillipcarter 5y ago
    > I strongly doubt it was to solve a problem, just someone with a lot of clout had a pet project. I don't know office politics there, sure. But Go most definitely solved problems by having a language optimized for fast(er) builds and generally being a language you can write code without thinking too hard about and getting good runtime performance out of. Many languages start out as pet projects, but can often solve a real problem such that they see internal adoption. That adoption can grow for various reasons, and in some cases, end up creating a sociotechnical system where it's now a thing even though it never started out with the intention of being a thing. It's at this time that demand is a key driver behind adoption, new features, etc. Do you still feel that Go "doesn't count" with respect to demand? > second because it attempts to patch an existing trainwreck and isn't even a new language. Firstly, JavaScript is hardly a trainwreck of a language, considering how successful it has been with respect to adoption and having such an incredible ecosystem for developers to work in. I worked on a typed functional programming language for 5 years, so be aware that my statement isn't one of ignorance of other languages. But nonetheless, since this is really a philosophical question, what exactly makes up a new language to you? In TypeScript, the type system is Turing Complete. It's a novel type system; there is no other language with the same set of features and semantics associated with it. I can write very functional and type-heavy TypeScript today and it's really not reminiscent of JavaScript aside from a few syntactical elements. Do you still feel that it "doesn't count"?
    - nottorp 5y ago
      > Firstly, JavaScript is hardly a trainwreck of a language, considering how successful it has been with respect to adoption and having such an incredible ecosystem for developers to work in. Quality != popularity. Look at Hollywood. JS is only popular because it got built into every browser, not because there is anything "quality" about it. Thus, attempts to fix it. > In TypeScript, the type system is Turing Complete. Ok, I'm afraid the only thing I can think of now is the metastasis that C++ is in. But that's again a philosophical point of view, and I'm drifting on another tangent too.