5 ms·

The most obvious example is pervasive type inference. It's not really dynamic, but languages with it look a lot closer to dynamic languages, and the removal of

The most obvious example is pervasive type inference. It's not really dynamic, but languages with it look a lot closer to dynamic languages, and the removal of repetitive type information is one of the benefits of dynamically typed languages. It gives them the clean, simple feel that it so attractive to many programmers. Also, over the past 20 years what you've seen is big advances in the 'semi-static' world like the JVM, where it runs statically typed languages but they have the ability to eval code, redefine their own code on the fly, reflect themselves, they're garbage collected etc. This is kind of a middle ground. It's worth remembering that when Python and Ruby were new, there weren't really any great options if you wanted lightweight syntax with garbage collection. Nowadays there is Kotlin and you can write code that looks very similar to say Ruby, but which often has the performance of entirely statically typed languages.

Zababa 5y ago
> This is kind of a middle ground. It's worth remembering that when Python and Ruby were new, there weren't really any great options if you wanted lightweight syntax with garbage collection. Nowadays there is Kotlin and you can write code that looks very similar to say Ruby, but which often has the performance of entirely statically typed languages. Lisps and MLs offered this before Ruby and Python got popular. Unless you don't consider them great options?
- native_samples 5y ago
  Well, getting into the question of why Lisps and MLs didn't take off is maybe too big a topic for this thread, but clearly the market didn't feel they were great options and still doesn't. Clojure remains a niche language for example. I suspect one issue is that Lisp never seemed to be well supported on Windows and never came out of the box on Linux, except perhaps for Guile, but Guile never reached any kind of critical mass despite being promoted by the GNU project. Maybe one reason is the lack of learning materials. Even today, although Guile has an initially pretty and appealing website, clicking "tutorials" reveals a complete lack of interest in growing that community - there is only one single tutorial, which is about how to embed Guile as a scripting language into a C program! https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/learn/#tutorials https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/learn/#tutorials I remember learning Python in the 1990s. The learning materials were excellent. Java was also famous for extensive tutorials and learning materials (they've lost that in recent years, the modern Java docsites are just piles of specifications, but when Java was interested in growth they had it). In the end these things matter more than the exact nature of a runtime or type system.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    That's a good point. I never really understood why GNU didn't use more Lisp, as the idea of "C for when performance is needed, Lisp for the rest" sounds great, but if tutorials weren't there that explains it. I learned programming later (~2010) and I remember Python being very easy to learn and install on Windows.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  Some Lisps were probably passable options in the early 90s, but as the sibling comment says, the lack of documentation and tutorials makes it not all that beginner friendly, along with the dizzying array of what to even choose if you want to use "a" Lisp. No ML was a realistic workable option back then at all. Haskell is fine now, but was barely introduced in 1993. OCaml has become a workable option almost entirely due to the gargantuan effort of Jane Street, but again, it wasn't then. Standard ML remains terrible. Library support is sparse, there is almost no community outside of academics, no consistent implementation of the standard basis, compilers are wildly different from each other. The REPLs tend to be great, but it's very difficult to get from a set of source files to a portable executable, whereas with Python and Ruby, just writing the source files already gets you that.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    That's fair for Lisp, I though having a standard made it better and the main choice was between Common Lisp and Scheme, but from what I see different people use different standards for scheme. > OCaml has become a workable option almost entirely due to the gargantuan effort of Jane Street, but again, it wasn't then. What do you mean by this? I'm aware of dune and opam, but people were using C and C++ without equivalents before without problems. Python's package managment and building is also not that good, even today. I don't have a strong grasp of the history of OCaml so maybe they released Core, Base and Async really early compared to batteries and Lwt? But outside of that, basic OCaml with a makefile doesn't sound worse than C/C++. > Standard ML remains terrible. Library support is sparse, there is almost no community outside of academics, no consistent implementation of the standard basis, compilers are wildly different from each other. That's fair, my point is more that I don't really understand why no big company ever picked it. Considering how much companies invested in their tooling (Google with Java, Go, Dart, Python, C++ ; Facebook with PHP and C++ ; etc), they could have made something great. > it's very difficult to get from a set of source files to a portable executable, whereas with Python and Ruby, just writing the source files already gets you that. Depends on your definition of portable executable. I've always found deploying and distributing Python and Ruby painful, at least to end users. The best in class experience here for me is Go, it's great for end users, great for servers, cross compilation works well.

Zababa 5y ago

> This is kind of a middle ground. It's worth remembering that when Python and Ruby were new, there weren't really any great options if you wanted lightweight syntax with garbage collection. Nowadays there is Kotlin and you can write code that looks very similar to say Ruby, but which often has the performance of entirely statically typed languages. Lisps and MLs offered this before Ruby and Python got popular. Unless you don't consider them great options?

native_samples 5y ago
Well, getting into the question of why Lisps and MLs didn't take off is maybe too big a topic for this thread, but clearly the market didn't feel they were great options and still doesn't. Clojure remains a niche language for example. I suspect one issue is that Lisp never seemed to be well supported on Windows and never came out of the box on Linux, except perhaps for Guile, but Guile never reached any kind of critical mass despite being promoted by the GNU project. Maybe one reason is the lack of learning materials. Even today, although Guile has an initially pretty and appealing website, clicking "tutorials" reveals a complete lack of interest in growing that community - there is only one single tutorial, which is about how to embed Guile as a scripting language into a C program! https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/learn/#tutorials https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/learn/#tutorials I remember learning Python in the 1990s. The learning materials were excellent. Java was also famous for extensive tutorials and learning materials (they've lost that in recent years, the modern Java docsites are just piles of specifications, but when Java was interested in growth they had it). In the end these things matter more than the exact nature of a runtime or type system.
- Zababa 5y ago
  That's a good point. I never really understood why GNU didn't use more Lisp, as the idea of "C for when performance is needed, Lisp for the rest" sounds great, but if tutorials weren't there that explains it. I learned programming later (~2010) and I remember Python being very easy to learn and install on Windows.
nonameiguess 5y ago
Some Lisps were probably passable options in the early 90s, but as the sibling comment says, the lack of documentation and tutorials makes it not all that beginner friendly, along with the dizzying array of what to even choose if you want to use "a" Lisp. No ML was a realistic workable option back then at all. Haskell is fine now, but was barely introduced in 1993. OCaml has become a workable option almost entirely due to the gargantuan effort of Jane Street, but again, it wasn't then. Standard ML remains terrible. Library support is sparse, there is almost no community outside of academics, no consistent implementation of the standard basis, compilers are wildly different from each other. The REPLs tend to be great, but it's very difficult to get from a set of source files to a portable executable, whereas with Python and Ruby, just writing the source files already gets you that.
- Zababa 5y ago
  That's fair for Lisp, I though having a standard made it better and the main choice was between Common Lisp and Scheme, but from what I see different people use different standards for scheme. > OCaml has become a workable option almost entirely due to the gargantuan effort of Jane Street, but again, it wasn't then. What do you mean by this? I'm aware of dune and opam, but people were using C and C++ without equivalents before without problems. Python's package managment and building is also not that good, even today. I don't have a strong grasp of the history of OCaml so maybe they released Core, Base and Async really early compared to batteries and Lwt? But outside of that, basic OCaml with a makefile doesn't sound worse than C/C++. > Standard ML remains terrible. Library support is sparse, there is almost no community outside of academics, no consistent implementation of the standard basis, compilers are wildly different from each other. That's fair, my point is more that I don't really understand why no big company ever picked it. Considering how much companies invested in their tooling (Google with Java, Go, Dart, Python, C++ ; Facebook with PHP and C++ ; etc), they could have made something great. > it's very difficult to get from a set of source files to a portable executable, whereas with Python and Ruby, just writing the source files already gets you that. Depends on your definition of portable executable. I've always found deploying and distributing Python and Ruby painful, at least to end users. The best in class experience here for me is Go, it's great for end users, great for servers, cross compilation works well.