5 ms·

I'm really interested to see Jai in the wild, but I have to say I find the Jai v.s. Rust comparison here...unconvincing to say to least. It's particularly funny

I'm really interested to see Jai in the wild, but I have to say I find the Jai v.s. Rust comparison here...unconvincing to say to least. It's particularly funny to be excited about "being able to do anything during compilation" using Jai and then complain to that the #1 problem in programming is "culturally tolerated and even encouraged complexity."

mjburgess 4y ago
Complexity often arises from restrictions on "anything", rather than people actually doing anything.
- owenpalmer 4y ago
  Excellent point!
- aeturnum 4y ago
  I'm curious - what you think of as a good example? I think of C++ templates & macros, which I would not describe as arising from restrictions?
  - ablob 4y ago
    Template metaprogramming in the absence of constexpr/concepts would be my guess.
    - Ar-Curunir 4y ago
      Traits are more restricted in what they can do than Templates, so the original quote does not apply here
      - mort96 4y ago
        Template metaprogramming is the idea of executing arbitrary logic at compile time using the template system as your programming language. The replacement for template metaprogramming is a solid compile-time execution model, not a traits system.
    - mjburgess 4y ago
      That would be the relevant example. Compile-time code restriction seems dumb. Programers can write any program they wish, stopping them for some ideological reason isnt effective. As with all the half-baked metaprogramming people restort to anyway.
ColonelPhantom 4y ago
I'm also slightly puzzled at saying "compilation is too slow!" followed by "I want to do anything during compilation". I think these are somewhat opposed to each other. Obviously it's not the only reason for slowness (stuff like templates vs vtables for example are also a huge impact), but at some point I tried to do some more advanced comptime stuff in Zig (it's pretty long ago, around Zig 0.6 or 0.7), and it became incredibly slow to compile. I'd assume it's gotten better with the newer and faster self-hosting compiler, but it still shows that with full comptime programming you can make your compiler as slow as your comptime program.
- elcritch 4y ago
  It depends on how you implement compile time execution. Creating a VM to run the code directly rather than reusing the compile+run cycle can speed things up. The VM executes slower but takes less time overall, especially with a complex language like Rust.
hardwaregeek 4y ago
I'm also frustrated at a language in closed beta being perpetually compared to a language that is open source and in production. It's a complete apples to oranges comparison. By being in closed beta, there is no way of verifying anything said about Jai. Instead you have to take the word of people in the Jai community, which is a very biased source to say the least.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  People aren't used to seeing languages (, products) developed in a "visible but closed" beta. It is, initially, quite confusing. It makes more sense to see it like game development, which I think it's blow's pov. He's not an open source developer, he's a game developer. And he's making a product he wants to be complete and correct before release. I think there's quite a lot of good-will towards Blow, and I imagine he has some clout in the game dev. community. My sense is that when he releases his game written in this, and gives it its final syntax-and-semantics pass -- he will get buy-in from some places (esp. indies).
- Tozen 4y ago
  Very good point, which partially alludes to the hype. It is amazing how much publicity that Jai is getting, despite being in a closed beta. It brings up the argument that if it were open to the public, with more eyes and critics on it, would the "hype train" crash? Odin (https://odin-lang.org/ https://odin-lang.org/), a near category language, that is influenced by Jai and is open to the public, does not appear to be getting anywhere near the recognition. To what extent does Jonathan Blow's status as a celebrity programmer, plays into all of this? As in, people want Jai to be the "next big thing", versus the actual merits of the language.
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    One of the things people get excited about is meta-programming, which Jai has much more of than Odin. Jai has a lot more weird stuff than Odin. Idiosyncratic features like if we're iterating through a sequence we can delete items as we go with a dedicated keyword, via a swap and shrink mechanism. Perhaps some of that weird stuff will be smoothed off during beta, or perhaps Jon will double down on it. But it does make Jai more interesting to talk about meanwhile than Odin which is a more "normal" language design. I suspect I will never have reason to use either language "in anger" so to speak, but Jai is more interesting to me for the reasons I stated.

mjburgess 4y ago

Complexity often arises from restrictions on "anything", rather than people actually doing anything.

owenpalmer 4y ago
Excellent point!
aeturnum 4y ago
I'm curious - what you think of as a good example? I think of C++ templates & macros, which I would not describe as arising from restrictions?
- ablob 4y ago
  Template metaprogramming in the absence of constexpr/concepts would be my guess.
  - Ar-Curunir 4y ago
    Traits are more restricted in what they can do than Templates, so the original quote does not apply here
    - mort96 4y ago
      Template metaprogramming is the idea of executing arbitrary logic at compile time using the template system as your programming language. The replacement for template metaprogramming is a solid compile-time execution model, not a traits system.
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    That would be the relevant example. Compile-time code restriction seems dumb. Programers can write any program they wish, stopping them for some ideological reason isnt effective. As with all the half-baked metaprogramming people restort to anyway.

ColonelPhantom 4y ago

I'm also slightly puzzled at saying "compilation is too slow!" followed by "I want to do anything during compilation". I think these are somewhat opposed to each other. Obviously it's not the only reason for slowness (stuff like templates vs vtables for example are also a huge impact), but at some point I tried to do some more advanced comptime stuff in Zig (it's pretty long ago, around Zig 0.6 or 0.7), and it became incredibly slow to compile. I'd assume it's gotten better with the newer and faster self-hosting compiler, but it still shows that with full comptime programming you can make your compiler as slow as your comptime program.

elcritch 4y ago
It depends on how you implement compile time execution. Creating a VM to run the code directly rather than reusing the compile+run cycle can speed things up. The VM executes slower but takes less time overall, especially with a complex language like Rust.

hardwaregeek 4y ago

I'm also frustrated at a language in closed beta being perpetually compared to a language that is open source and in production. It's a complete apples to oranges comparison. By being in closed beta, there is no way of verifying anything said about Jai. Instead you have to take the word of people in the Jai community, which is a very biased source to say the least.

mjburgess 4y ago
People aren't used to seeing languages (, products) developed in a "visible but closed" beta. It is, initially, quite confusing. It makes more sense to see it like game development, which I think it's blow's pov. He's not an open source developer, he's a game developer. And he's making a product he wants to be complete and correct before release. I think there's quite a lot of good-will towards Blow, and I imagine he has some clout in the game dev. community. My sense is that when he releases his game written in this, and gives it its final syntax-and-semantics pass -- he will get buy-in from some places (esp. indies).
Tozen 4y ago
Very good point, which partially alludes to the hype. It is amazing how much publicity that Jai is getting, despite being in a closed beta. It brings up the argument that if it were open to the public, with more eyes and critics on it, would the "hype train" crash? Odin (https://odin-lang.org/ https://odin-lang.org/), a near category language, that is influenced by Jai and is open to the public, does not appear to be getting anywhere near the recognition. To what extent does Jonathan Blow's status as a celebrity programmer, plays into all of this? As in, people want Jai to be the "next big thing", versus the actual merits of the language.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  One of the things people get excited about is meta-programming, which Jai has much more of than Odin. Jai has a lot more weird stuff than Odin. Idiosyncratic features like if we're iterating through a sequence we can delete items as we go with a dedicated keyword, via a swap and shrink mechanism. Perhaps some of that weird stuff will be smoothed off during beta, or perhaps Jon will double down on it. But it does make Jai more interesting to talk about meanwhile than Odin which is a more "normal" language design. I suspect I will never have reason to use either language "in anger" so to speak, but Jai is more interesting to me for the reasons I stated.