6 ms·

I wonder how popularity of "exotic" languages increases when AoC's around F#, Lisp and so on

riffraff 5y ago
There's always some cool stuff done with Raku, I'm giving it a chance this year as my "second language", we'll see how it goes.
Jenz 5y ago
Lisp is exotic?
- Scarbutt 5y ago
  Esoteric is the word I would use.
  - carnitine 5y ago
    Seriously? Lisp of all languages? Also esoteric is already applied to languages like Brainfuck which are designed to be as abstruse as possible.
    - Scarbutt 5y ago
      Yes, Lisp and F# are esoteric programming languages in the industry.
      - mrtranscendence 5y ago
        I've only seen "esoteric" refer to programming languages that are deliberately constructed to be obscure or unusual, usually in ways that make them unusable in some practical sense. Your Brainfucks or Malbolges, say. I've never heard of anyone applying that term to Lisp or especially F#. They might be unpopular, but they're usable, practical languages with good implementations.
        ByteJockey 5y ago
        A lot of people consider anything not in the tiobe top 10 to be esoteric (especially for the purposes of enterprise work). Maybe obscure is a better word here?
        mrtranscendence 5y ago
        Obscure is a good choice. I’d probably use niche. Honestly, esoteric could be a good word to describe lisp, except for the fact that it seems to already exist as a term for a category that wouldn’t include lisp.
        ByteJockey 5y ago
        Niche is fair. Basically, I'm trying to describe "not mainstream".
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        bcrosby95 5y ago
        By this metric, Ruby, Swift, Go, Rust, Kotlin, and Typescript are all obscure. Some of these are even more obscure than Lisp.
        ByteJockey 5y ago
        Correct. I know plenty of enterprises that do not touch any of those, mostly because of their fear of not being able to find devs familiar with those languages. As discussed elsewhere, it's possible niche might be a better term to describe what I'm talking about here than obscure.
        aarchi 5y ago
        I'm solving Advent of Code in Whitespace, a quintessential esolang. https://github.com/andrewarchi/ws-challenges https://github.com/andrewarchi/ws-challenges
jarpschop 5y ago
Why would Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' presence increase the popularity of some programming language?
- speg 5y ago
  Advent of Code.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    That sounded like a joke :)
    - gerikson 5y ago
      The price of humor on HN is eternal downvotes.
      - Nicksil 5y ago
        >The price of humor on HN is eternal downvotes. Not if its funny.
    - Toutouxc 5y ago
      It's important to understand that for every person familiar with the name and the abbreviation there are roughly 22 people who have no idea who she is.
overkalix 5y ago
Not particularly exotic, but the last two years I pushed myself to do them in elixir (although my solutions become progressively shoddy until I quit, usually around day 10-12). Then I promptly forget everything I've learnt because I can't introduce the language in my work.
mcjiggerlog 5y ago
It seems like 80% of people I've heard talking about AoC are planning on doing it in Rust (including me!). It's definitely a great way to get up to speed with a language you're interested in learning.
- jstx1 5y ago
  In last year's survey Rust was around 10%. It's definitely overrepresented but not quite that much.
- aunderscored 5y ago
  I definitely enjoyed doing rust. I'm planning on doing go, rust, and python. We'll see how well that holds up
- ducharmdev 5y ago
  Yup, I'm doing Rust this year as well. I've worked through rustlings a couple times in the past, but haven't had many excuses to use Rust. I was proud last year when I got to day 18 with Python, but I'm setting the bar much lower this year. I don't have any experience with C/C++ (just C# and a bit of Go), so thinking more carefully about memory mgmt is new to me. But the functional aspects of Rust are pretty exciting.
asicsp 5y ago
Some create a language just for AoC, for example: https://github.com/healeycodes/adventlang https://github.com/healeycodes/adventlang
- mnw21cam 5y ago
  That'd be interesting given that 2019 was already about a created language.
  - riffraff 5y ago
    One of the solutions I saw today was in Intcode (the language from 2019), it was pretty incredible.
jstx1 5y ago
There's definitely a selection effect - the type of person that will spend time on Advent of Code is also likely to be the type of person that learns and uses more exotic languages, or at least languages that aren't used that much commercially. Some stats to confirm - https://preview.redd.it/jrhlcxrzy0761.png?width=2275&format=png&auto=webp&s=6ffe20ec96234a4f9a3ed9a07a32cf2ba503a6a5 https://preview.redd.it/jrhlcxrzy0761.png?width=2275&format=... - taken from from last years' unofficial survey - https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/kj53l1/unofficial_aoc_2020_survey_results/ https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/kj53l1/unoffi...
mikewarot 5y ago
I'll balance that out for you, I do my programming in Pascal. I'm going through the old ones as well, hoping to back-fill in answers to all of them. https://github.com/mikewarot/Advent_of_Code_in_Pascal https://github.com/mikewarot/Advent_of_Code_in_Pascal
petercooper 5y ago
APL is the language I only ever see around AoC. But it's so impressive too. Like the first part of today's solution is "+/¯1↓x<1⊖x" (stolen from someone on Reddit) and I'm like.. ok, I need to learn this language one day. (Since their solution is now being discussed, it's from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/r66vow/2021_day_1_solutions/hmsacv9/ https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/r66vow/2021_d...)
- maximus-decimus 5y ago
  and this is the solution in Q, including paring the file: `(+/) 1_ (>':) "I" $ read0 `:input_1.txt` I don't think their second solution actually works unless I'm missing something though : +/¯3↓x<3⊖x This compares every element to the the one 3 positions before it, when the question was to take the sum of each 3 elements and check if it's smaller than the previous sum.
- ollran 5y ago
  APL is quite common in the code golf scene.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  Interesting solution. 1⊖x Rotates the sequence so the first becomes the last. x < 1⊖x Element-wise compare each, resulting in a list of 1s and 0s ¯1 ↓ x<1⊖x Drop the last element because it's actually not part of the solution (thanks to the earlier rotation). +/ ¯1↓x<1⊖x Sum all of them, since it's just 1s and 0s this gives a correct count. Part 2 is solvable (unless I missed something, works on the sample data) by just changing two characters from that solution. Neat.
  - petercooper 5y ago
    Thanks for the explanation! I just found someone with a different approach who has similarly broken it down on Twitter: https://twitter.com/janiczek/status/1465969017089363969 https://twitter.com/janiczek/status/1465969017089363969
    - 5y ago
runevault 5y ago
I've been getting back into f# lately and going to use it for AoC to give me real challenges to work on instead of arbitrary ideas, so it is certainly helping one of the mentioned for me.
phillipcarter 5y ago
I'm using it as an opportunity to try out Crystal. I have zero Ruby experience, so it's a fun experience coming in from a "no, actually, none of this is familiar to me" perspective. Nice language.

There's always some cool stuff done with Raku, I'm giving it a chance this year as my "second language", we'll see how it goes.

Jenz 5y ago

Lisp is exotic?

Scarbutt 5y ago
Esoteric is the word I would use.
- carnitine 5y ago
  Seriously? Lisp of all languages? Also esoteric is already applied to languages like Brainfuck which are designed to be as abstruse as possible.
  - Scarbutt 5y ago
    Yes, Lisp and F# are esoteric programming languages in the industry.
    - mrtranscendence 5y ago
      I've only seen "esoteric" refer to programming languages that are deliberately constructed to be obscure or unusual, usually in ways that make them unusable in some practical sense. Your Brainfucks or Malbolges, say. I've never heard of anyone applying that term to Lisp or especially F#. They might be unpopular, but they're usable, practical languages with good implementations.
      - ByteJockey 5y ago
        A lot of people consider anything not in the tiobe top 10 to be esoteric (especially for the purposes of enterprise work). Maybe obscure is a better word here?
        mrtranscendence 5y ago
        Obscure is a good choice. I’d probably use niche. Honestly, esoteric could be a good word to describe lisp, except for the fact that it seems to already exist as a term for a category that wouldn’t include lisp.
        ByteJockey 5y ago
        Niche is fair. Basically, I'm trying to describe "not mainstream".
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        bcrosby95 5y ago
        By this metric, Ruby, Swift, Go, Rust, Kotlin, and Typescript are all obscure. Some of these are even more obscure than Lisp.
        ByteJockey 5y ago
        Correct. I know plenty of enterprises that do not touch any of those, mostly because of their fear of not being able to find devs familiar with those languages. As discussed elsewhere, it's possible niche might be a better term to describe what I'm talking about here than obscure.
      - aarchi 5y ago
        I'm solving Advent of Code in Whitespace, a quintessential esolang. https://github.com/andrewarchi/ws-challenges https://github.com/andrewarchi/ws-challenges

jarpschop 5y ago

Why would Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' presence increase the popularity of some programming language?

speg 5y ago
Advent of Code.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  That sounded like a joke :)
  - gerikson 5y ago
    The price of humor on HN is eternal downvotes.
    - Nicksil 5y ago
      >The price of humor on HN is eternal downvotes. Not if its funny.
  - Toutouxc 5y ago
    It's important to understand that for every person familiar with the name and the abbreviation there are roughly 22 people who have no idea who she is.

overkalix 5y ago

Not particularly exotic, but the last two years I pushed myself to do them in elixir (although my solutions become progressively shoddy until I quit, usually around day 10-12). Then I promptly forget everything I've learnt because I can't introduce the language in my work.

mcjiggerlog 5y ago

It seems like 80% of people I've heard talking about AoC are planning on doing it in Rust (including me!). It's definitely a great way to get up to speed with a language you're interested in learning.

jstx1 5y ago
In last year's survey Rust was around 10%. It's definitely overrepresented but not quite that much.
aunderscored 5y ago
I definitely enjoyed doing rust. I'm planning on doing go, rust, and python. We'll see how well that holds up
ducharmdev 5y ago
Yup, I'm doing Rust this year as well. I've worked through rustlings a couple times in the past, but haven't had many excuses to use Rust. I was proud last year when I got to day 18 with Python, but I'm setting the bar much lower this year. I don't have any experience with C/C++ (just C# and a bit of Go), so thinking more carefully about memory mgmt is new to me. But the functional aspects of Rust are pretty exciting.

asicsp 5y ago

Some create a language just for AoC, for example: https://github.com/healeycodes/adventlang https://github.com/healeycodes/adventlang

mnw21cam 5y ago
That'd be interesting given that 2019 was already about a created language.
- riffraff 5y ago
  One of the solutions I saw today was in Intcode (the language from 2019), it was pretty incredible.

jstx1 5y ago

There's definitely a selection effect - the type of person that will spend time on Advent of Code is also likely to be the type of person that learns and uses more exotic languages, or at least languages that aren't used that much commercially. Some stats to confirm - https://preview.redd.it/jrhlcxrzy0761.png?width=2275&format=png&auto=webp&s=6ffe20ec96234a4f9a3ed9a07a32cf2ba503a6a5 https://preview.redd.it/jrhlcxrzy0761.png?width=2275&format=... - taken from from last years' unofficial survey - https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/kj53l1/unofficial_aoc_2020_survey_results/ https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/kj53l1/unoffi...

mikewarot 5y ago

I'll balance that out for you, I do my programming in Pascal. I'm going through the old ones as well, hoping to back-fill in answers to all of them. https://github.com/mikewarot/Advent_of_Code_in_Pascal https://github.com/mikewarot/Advent_of_Code_in_Pascal

petercooper 5y ago

APL is the language I only ever see around AoC. But it's so impressive too. Like the first part of today's solution is "+/¯1↓x<1⊖x" (stolen from someone on Reddit) and I'm like.. ok, I need to learn this language one day. (Since their solution is now being discussed, it's from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/r66vow/2021_day_1_solutions/hmsacv9/ https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/r66vow/2021_d...)

maximus-decimus 5y ago
and this is the solution in Q, including paring the file: `(+/) 1_ (>':) "I" $ read0 `:input_1.txt` I don't think their second solution actually works unless I'm missing something though : +/¯3↓x<3⊖x This compares every element to the the one 3 positions before it, when the question was to take the sum of each 3 elements and check if it's smaller than the previous sum.
ollran 5y ago
APL is quite common in the code golf scene.
Jtsummers 5y ago
Interesting solution. 1⊖x Rotates the sequence so the first becomes the last. x < 1⊖x Element-wise compare each, resulting in a list of 1s and 0s ¯1 ↓ x<1⊖x Drop the last element because it's actually not part of the solution (thanks to the earlier rotation). +/ ¯1↓x<1⊖x Sum all of them, since it's just 1s and 0s this gives a correct count. Part 2 is solvable (unless I missed something, works on the sample data) by just changing two characters from that solution. Neat.
- petercooper 5y ago
  Thanks for the explanation! I just found someone with a different approach who has similarly broken it down on Twitter: https://twitter.com/janiczek/status/1465969017089363969 https://twitter.com/janiczek/status/1465969017089363969
  - 5y ago

runevault 5y ago

I've been getting back into f# lately and going to use it for AoC to give me real challenges to work on instead of arbitrary ideas, so it is certainly helping one of the mentioned for me.

phillipcarter 5y ago

I'm using it as an opportunity to try out Crystal. I have zero Ruby experience, so it's a fun experience coming in from a "no, actually, none of this is familiar to me" perspective. Nice language.