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I don’t understand how this language is planning on ever seeing adoption when it’s been restricted from open use since it’s inception. Seems like vaporware.

by dymk 4y ago

diimdeep 4y ago
See https://github.com/Jai-Community/Jai-Community-Library/wiki/Overview#history https://github.com/Jai-Community/Jai-Community-Library/wiki/... and https://github.com/Ivo-Balbaert/The_Way_to_Jai https://github.com/Ivo-Balbaert/The_Way_to_Jai
- DannyBee 4y ago
  Your links back up the statement. The first says the compiler is proprietary and unavailable outside of some beta testers, but may be open in the great and nebulous future.
- p0nce 4y ago
  > Supports x86 architecture only No native macOS then? > No virtual functions > Jai is less dogmatic okay
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    > No native macOS then? Or Pi, or iOS, or practically all Android hardware… Kind of a non-starter IMO. Maybe this was marginally acceptable when the language started in '14 but it becomes less so every year.
    - imran0 4y ago
      It has an LLVM backend so adding support for other architectures is not difficult. JB already ported the compiler to Nintendo Switch several years ago. https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/cixsoy/jonathan_blows_jai_game_programming_language_now/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/cixsoy/jona...
      - mhh__ 4y ago
        Most of the work is in the compiler's backend but you still need to set it up to generate the right object files and C ABI etc etc.
    - naikrovek 4y ago
      well, given that any random person can't just adopt the language today, the platform support available today doesn't really matter, does it? Jon is writing it for his needs, and this thread is full of people saying "it doesn't meet my needs!" So what? it's not for you!
      - Cyberdog 4y ago
        Yeah, I guess that’s true as far as Blow goes. But there are other people interested in this thing (hence why the OP exists and why we’re commenting on it). And I presume not all of them want to lock themselves in to the apparent dead end that is the x86 platform in the current year when both cross-platform languages and cross-platform game engines are all over the place.
    - throwaway17_17 4y ago
      Blow is designing and implementing a language for making video games, and in particular, for making Thekla’s video games (Jon’s game company). Blow does not make mobile games, nor does he make small, retro-style games that would typically be run on a Pi. His concerns are modern Windows gaming PC’s and the big three consoles. While Jai is Turing-complete and is ‘general-purpose’, the implementation serves Blow’s needs first and fioremost, so the chosen targets make sense in light of that.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      Given that he and his team are developing a language and a game in that language at the same time it makes sense to focus on the primary platforms they work on, and expect their game to currently run. Their primary platform is Windows, and the game in its current very early state is also running on Windows. What's the value in porting it to Raspberry Pi or Android? From the streams it looks like a Linux port is usually mostly up to date, and MacOS understandably lags behind. But neither of these platforms have any high priority for now.
Cyberdog 4y ago
Maybe it's a marketing thing. Creating a perception of exclusivity. Making Jai the Maserati and Gucci of programming languages. That's ridiculous but seeing the odd level of interest in this language that almost nobody can use means maybe it's working.
- renox 4y ago
  I agree that it's marketing but not for the 'exclusivity' reason, for the 'first impression' reason. You'll still hear quite often that DMD is proprietary or that there is no free Ada compiler even though this hasn't been true for many years..
- dottedmag 4y ago
  It's "do I have bandwidth to deal with all the feature requests?" thing for now.
StevePerkins 4y ago
Over the past decade, I watched HN's and Reddit's hype waves cycle through server-side JavaScript, Golang, Haskell, and now Rust. With plenty of secondary favorites in the mix like Julia, Nim, Zig, etc. A lot of these things do find some modest niche to survive in. But none really take over the world as originally forecast by the hype wave. Ultimately, you either enjoy tinkering with programming languages for personal enrichment, or you do not. Hardly anyone is actually using anything else at our Java/C#/Python/C++ day jobs.
- mlyle 4y ago
  I'm starting to actually believe that Rust will eat C's lunch for systems programming.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Lets see if it has better luck than C++ on domains that don't care about anything beyond C89, and compiler extensions.
  - zppln 4y ago
    People have been believing that for close to a decade now.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Yup, and it keeps steadily winning a small stream of converts and additional projects from C. So I didn't believe it before, but it's starting to seem more plausible. Of course, it'll take a very long time. There's a lot of C code out there. :D
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - dymk 4y ago
      And now there’s Rust in the Linux kernel
typon 4y ago
Design by committee vs. design by singular vision is an age old debate. We have plenty of the former, why not give the latter a try? There are plenty of good languages out there already to use, why does this language have to aim for wide adoption?
doodpants 4y ago
I think Jonathan Blow's main goal is to make his dream game programming language so that he can be happier while developing all of his future games. Widespread adoption by others is only a secondary concern. He also doesn't want to push it out to the general public until he feels it's ready, and wants to take the time to get it right first.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  Jonathan Blow is a skilled craftsman with stuff like this and he knows he's going to get a bunch of Opinions About His Language from people who think they have a complete superset of his knowlege, and he is making his language without involving those people in any way.
  - sph 4y ago
  - klodolph 4y ago
    That’s fair, but if you look at his posts about the language, he also makes a big point about how he doesn’t want any input from people with an academic background in language & type theory. This smells like anti-intellectualism to me. I’m a bit concerned that some of the decisions that he’s making in the language are leading towards traps that have caught other language designers in the past, but because he’s rejecting that expertise, he has to learn from experience, at greater cost. These concerns are motivated by specific things I’ve seen in Jai code, but I don’t really want to dive into the specifics, since Jai is unavailable.
    - cyber_kinetist 4y ago
      I think his disdain towards academia isn't really anti-intellectualism (he's not ignorant of compiler theory knowledge, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to write a compiler from scratch in the first place! And his interest in programming languages seems to span decades, from what I remember from one of his streams). I think he's critical of the fact that the primary focus of academia and industry in computer science have diverged so much over the years, such that most academic CS works haven't really helped developers in building better programs and tools. Thinking about the countless hours compiler academics have spent on all sorts of esoteric parser theory in the past, while all the production compilers today are using recursive decent for pragmatic reasons... maybe this kinda makes sense.
gizmo 4y ago
The other niche languages are either buggy, slow, or both. Jai won't be. Ultimately it's about taste and quality. If the language gets enough right then people will switch to it, because people are desperate for a c++ alternative. Open sourcing or early access won't help here. Somebody just has to do the hard work of writing the compiler internals, and it will be done when it's done. And really, I wouldn't bet against somebody who has delivered on big projects twice before.
dboreham 4y ago
If you watch JB's videos (actually they're posted by someone else on YouTube I believe, taken from his Twitch streams), the language definitely exists.
overgard 4y ago
I'm not sure Blow cares that much about widespread adoption; he seems more concerned with quality. Personally I'd love an open beta, but I can understand why he might want to reserve the right to make drastic changes to the language before he releases it.

I don’t understand how this language is planning on ever seeing adoption when it’s been restricted from open use since it’s inception. Seems like vaporware.

by dymk 4y ago

I don’t understand how this language is planning on ever seeing adoption when it’s been restricted from open use since it’s inception. Seems like vaporware.

diimdeep 4y ago

See https://github.com/Jai-Community/Jai-Community-Library/wiki/Overview#history https://github.com/Jai-Community/Jai-Community-Library/wiki/... and https://github.com/Ivo-Balbaert/The_Way_to_Jai https://github.com/Ivo-Balbaert/The_Way_to_Jai

DannyBee 4y ago
Your links back up the statement. The first says the compiler is proprietary and unavailable outside of some beta testers, but may be open in the great and nebulous future.
p0nce 4y ago
> Supports x86 architecture only No native macOS then? > No virtual functions > Jai is less dogmatic okay
- Cyberdog 4y ago
  > No native macOS then? Or Pi, or iOS, or practically all Android hardware… Kind of a non-starter IMO. Maybe this was marginally acceptable when the language started in '14 but it becomes less so every year.
  - imran0 4y ago
    It has an LLVM backend so adding support for other architectures is not difficult. JB already ported the compiler to Nintendo Switch several years ago. https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/cixsoy/jonathan_blows_jai_game_programming_language_now/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/cixsoy/jona...
    - mhh__ 4y ago
      Most of the work is in the compiler's backend but you still need to set it up to generate the right object files and C ABI etc etc.
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    well, given that any random person can't just adopt the language today, the platform support available today doesn't really matter, does it? Jon is writing it for his needs, and this thread is full of people saying "it doesn't meet my needs!" So what? it's not for you!
    - Cyberdog 4y ago
      Yeah, I guess that’s true as far as Blow goes. But there are other people interested in this thing (hence why the OP exists and why we’re commenting on it). And I presume not all of them want to lock themselves in to the apparent dead end that is the x86 platform in the current year when both cross-platform languages and cross-platform game engines are all over the place.
  - throwaway17_17 4y ago
    Blow is designing and implementing a language for making video games, and in particular, for making Thekla’s video games (Jon’s game company). Blow does not make mobile games, nor does he make small, retro-style games that would typically be run on a Pi. His concerns are modern Windows gaming PC’s and the big three consoles. While Jai is Turing-complete and is ‘general-purpose’, the implementation serves Blow’s needs first and fioremost, so the chosen targets make sense in light of that.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    Given that he and his team are developing a language and a game in that language at the same time it makes sense to focus on the primary platforms they work on, and expect their game to currently run. Their primary platform is Windows, and the game in its current very early state is also running on Windows. What's the value in porting it to Raspberry Pi or Android? From the streams it looks like a Linux port is usually mostly up to date, and MacOS understandably lags behind. But neither of these platforms have any high priority for now.

Cyberdog 4y ago

Maybe it's a marketing thing. Creating a perception of exclusivity. Making Jai the Maserati and Gucci of programming languages. That's ridiculous but seeing the odd level of interest in this language that almost nobody can use means maybe it's working.

renox 4y ago
I agree that it's marketing but not for the 'exclusivity' reason, for the 'first impression' reason. You'll still hear quite often that DMD is proprietary or that there is no free Ada compiler even though this hasn't been true for many years..
dottedmag 4y ago
It's "do I have bandwidth to deal with all the feature requests?" thing for now.

StevePerkins 4y ago

Over the past decade, I watched HN's and Reddit's hype waves cycle through server-side JavaScript, Golang, Haskell, and now Rust. With plenty of secondary favorites in the mix like Julia, Nim, Zig, etc. A lot of these things do find some modest niche to survive in. But none really take over the world as originally forecast by the hype wave. Ultimately, you either enjoy tinkering with programming languages for personal enrichment, or you do not. Hardly anyone is actually using anything else at our Java/C#/Python/C++ day jobs.

mlyle 4y ago
I'm starting to actually believe that Rust will eat C's lunch for systems programming.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Lets see if it has better luck than C++ on domains that don't care about anything beyond C89, and compiler extensions.
- zppln 4y ago
  People have been believing that for close to a decade now.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    Yup, and it keeps steadily winning a small stream of converts and additional projects from C. So I didn't believe it before, but it's starting to seem more plausible. Of course, it'll take a very long time. There's a lot of C code out there. :D
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - dymk 4y ago
    And now there’s Rust in the Linux kernel

typon 4y ago

Design by committee vs. design by singular vision is an age old debate. We have plenty of the former, why not give the latter a try? There are plenty of good languages out there already to use, why does this language have to aim for wide adoption?

doodpants 4y ago

I think Jonathan Blow's main goal is to make his dream game programming language so that he can be happier while developing all of his future games. Widespread adoption by others is only a secondary concern. He also doesn't want to push it out to the general public until he feels it's ready, and wants to take the time to get it right first.

naikrovek 4y ago
Jonathan Blow is a skilled craftsman with stuff like this and he knows he's going to get a bunch of Opinions About His Language from people who think they have a complete superset of his knowlege, and he is making his language without involving those people in any way.
- sph 4y ago
- klodolph 4y ago
  That’s fair, but if you look at his posts about the language, he also makes a big point about how he doesn’t want any input from people with an academic background in language & type theory. This smells like anti-intellectualism to me. I’m a bit concerned that some of the decisions that he’s making in the language are leading towards traps that have caught other language designers in the past, but because he’s rejecting that expertise, he has to learn from experience, at greater cost. These concerns are motivated by specific things I’ve seen in Jai code, but I don’t really want to dive into the specifics, since Jai is unavailable.
  - cyber_kinetist 4y ago
    I think his disdain towards academia isn't really anti-intellectualism (he's not ignorant of compiler theory knowledge, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to write a compiler from scratch in the first place! And his interest in programming languages seems to span decades, from what I remember from one of his streams). I think he's critical of the fact that the primary focus of academia and industry in computer science have diverged so much over the years, such that most academic CS works haven't really helped developers in building better programs and tools. Thinking about the countless hours compiler academics have spent on all sorts of esoteric parser theory in the past, while all the production compilers today are using recursive decent for pragmatic reasons... maybe this kinda makes sense.

gizmo 4y ago

The other niche languages are either buggy, slow, or both. Jai won't be. Ultimately it's about taste and quality. If the language gets enough right then people will switch to it, because people are desperate for a c++ alternative. Open sourcing or early access won't help here. Somebody just has to do the hard work of writing the compiler internals, and it will be done when it's done. And really, I wouldn't bet against somebody who has delivered on big projects twice before.

dboreham 4y ago

If you watch JB's videos (actually they're posted by someone else on YouTube I believe, taken from his Twitch streams), the language definitely exists.

overgard 4y ago

I'm not sure Blow cares that much about widespread adoption; he seems more concerned with quality. Personally I'd love an open beta, but I can understand why he might want to reserve the right to make drastic changes to the language before he releases it.