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Powerful libraries are a cheap way to make a new language the language du jour. (Think Rails.) They're not the critical ingredient if you're trying to make som

by pg 18y ago

Powerful libraries are a cheap way to make a new language the language du jour. (Think Rails.) They're not the critical ingredient if you're trying to make something to last; they may even hurt.

john_amendall 18y ago
Libraries are just one aspect of it. Clojure's already got an excellent VM and a sound programming model to deal with concurrency.
EliAndrewC 18y ago
How could it hurt a language's lasting power for it to have powerful libraries? Do you mean that it might hurt Clojure specifically, because it relies on Java's libraries in particular? Or was it a more general point?
- pg 18y ago
  It was just a general point. I don't know anything about Clojure. The dangers of libraries are that they distract one's attention from the core language, and that they could conceal or perpetuate flaws in the core language. I'm not saying that languages shouldn't have powerful libraries, btw, just that they may not be 100% upside.
  - mike_organon 18y ago
    I think it's unfortunate you haven't even looked at Clojure. If you did, it's possible both languages could benefit. While I am a fan of the JVM, one downside of the language is that compromises were needed to work nicely on the JVM. Besides that, Clojure has many features that make programming in it great for experimentation (and large-scale), and I don't see those features in Arc. If Arc had immutability, threading, STM concurrency, lazy functions, and literal data structures, but without the JVM compromises and with the 100-year goal, it might be more interesting to me and others. I looked at Arc when it first came out, but the homepage still doesn't spell out what makes it worthwhile other than "brief and malleable".
mixmax 18y ago
Yes, but without powerful libraries a language isn't much good for real world use. And if nobody uses the language it won't have a community and feedback. Without a community people will move on, and it will end up as a pet project.
- pg 18y ago
  There are two senses of powerful: breadth and depth. To make a language massively popular you need breadth. But for a language to have a user community all you need is depth, which is why I released news.arc with Arc.
jmatt 18y ago
This post just seems to be begging for comment ~ maybe it's because it's relatively rare that we get pg talking about arc. they may even hurt. I'm assuming you are referring to the maintenance and backward compatibility that is required as soon as you have libraries. Plus good libraries can be had even in bad languages - so it's not a good reflection of the language. Are you suggesting libraries should be a completely separate project with potentially many choices? The problem with this can be seen in Scheme. It's hard to move from project to project (job to job) when they use different implementations and those related libraries. Learning the related core libraries is often not worth it; if the scope of the project is small. Invariably libraries do not transfer well - maybe that is the problem that needs to be solved... Even with formalities like R5RS or R6RS core libraries are still implementation specific. Plus, arc is suffering from an absentee benevolent dictator. ... You are missed over at the arclanguage forums. (http://arclanguage.org/item?id=8462 http://arclanguage.org/item?id=8462) Specifically some direction for those of us that enjoy writing arc would be great. There are plenty of people that know and write arc - why not put them to work. What is your opinion of the community version of arc (http://github.com/nex3/arc/tree/master http://github.com/nex3/arc/tree/master)? Do you use it? Is it blasphemy? Is this all just a giant social experiment to see what will happen to the language and community given no leadership and x-number of years?
- jules 18y ago
  > Is this all just a giant social experiment to see what will happen to the language and community given no leadership and x-number of years? It's pretty clear already: arc has failed.
  - gruseom 18y ago
    arc has failed Failed at what, exactly? Being a toaster? You guys all seem to be projecting your own expectations about "language and community" onto Arc, none of which have to do with the stated goals of the project. What part of making-a-better-Lisp-where-better-mostly-equals-shorter-programs don't you understand?
    - 18y ago

by pg 18y ago

Powerful libraries are a cheap way to make a new language the language du jour. (Think Rails.) They're not the critical ingredient if you're trying to make something to last; they may even hurt.

john_amendall 18y ago

Libraries are just one aspect of it. Clojure's already got an excellent VM and a sound programming model to deal with concurrency.

EliAndrewC 18y ago

How could it hurt a language's lasting power for it to have powerful libraries? Do you mean that it might hurt Clojure specifically, because it relies on Java's libraries in particular? Or was it a more general point?

pg 18y ago
It was just a general point. I don't know anything about Clojure. The dangers of libraries are that they distract one's attention from the core language, and that they could conceal or perpetuate flaws in the core language. I'm not saying that languages shouldn't have powerful libraries, btw, just that they may not be 100% upside.
- mike_organon 18y ago
  I think it's unfortunate you haven't even looked at Clojure. If you did, it's possible both languages could benefit. While I am a fan of the JVM, one downside of the language is that compromises were needed to work nicely on the JVM. Besides that, Clojure has many features that make programming in it great for experimentation (and large-scale), and I don't see those features in Arc. If Arc had immutability, threading, STM concurrency, lazy functions, and literal data structures, but without the JVM compromises and with the 100-year goal, it might be more interesting to me and others. I looked at Arc when it first came out, but the homepage still doesn't spell out what makes it worthwhile other than "brief and malleable".

mixmax 18y ago

Yes, but without powerful libraries a language isn't much good for real world use. And if nobody uses the language it won't have a community and feedback. Without a community people will move on, and it will end up as a pet project.

pg 18y ago
There are two senses of powerful: breadth and depth. To make a language massively popular you need breadth. But for a language to have a user community all you need is depth, which is why I released news.arc with Arc.

jmatt 18y ago

This post just seems to be begging for comment ~ maybe it's because it's relatively rare that we get pg talking about arc. they may even hurt. I'm assuming you are referring to the maintenance and backward compatibility that is required as soon as you have libraries. Plus good libraries can be had even in bad languages - so it's not a good reflection of the language. Are you suggesting libraries should be a completely separate project with potentially many choices? The problem with this can be seen in Scheme. It's hard to move from project to project (job to job) when they use different implementations and those related libraries. Learning the related core libraries is often not worth it; if the scope of the project is small. Invariably libraries do not transfer well - maybe that is the problem that needs to be solved... Even with formalities like R5RS or R6RS core libraries are still implementation specific. Plus, arc is suffering from an absentee benevolent dictator. ... You are missed over at the arclanguage forums. (http://arclanguage.org/item?id=8462 http://arclanguage.org/item?id=8462) Specifically some direction for those of us that enjoy writing arc would be great. There are plenty of people that know and write arc - why not put them to work. What is your opinion of the community version of arc (http://github.com/nex3/arc/tree/master http://github.com/nex3/arc/tree/master)? Do you use it? Is it blasphemy? Is this all just a giant social experiment to see what will happen to the language and community given no leadership and x-number of years?

jules 18y ago
> Is this all just a giant social experiment to see what will happen to the language and community given no leadership and x-number of years? It's pretty clear already: arc has failed.
- gruseom 18y ago
  arc has failed Failed at what, exactly? Being a toaster? You guys all seem to be projecting your own expectations about "language and community" onto Arc, none of which have to do with the stated goals of the project. What part of making-a-better-Lisp-where-better-mostly-equals-shorter-programs don't you understand?
  - 18y ago