5 ms·

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 orang

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.
  - matiasfernandez 4y ago
    Pop and swap while iterating is definitely a useful feature. You can also queue removals up and do the pop and swap all together on a cleanup pass (snippet below). That said, most people don't code this way, so yeah, useful for sure. https://github.com/matias-eduardo/conway/blob/2496472b0018bbb88c2a8e17fd3462a3c5b4327f/main.odin#L327-L339 https://github.com/matias-eduardo/conway/blob/2496472b0018bb...

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.
- matiasfernandez 4y ago
  Pop and swap while iterating is definitely a useful feature. You can also queue removals up and do the pop and swap all together on a cleanup pass (snippet below). That said, most people don't code this way, so yeah, useful for sure. https://github.com/matias-eduardo/conway/blob/2496472b0018bbb88c2a8e17fd3462a3c5b4327f/main.odin#L327-L339 https://github.com/matias-eduardo/conway/blob/2496472b0018bb...