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Are multiple implementations beneficial to the community?

• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
• dons 15y ago
  Yes and no. Yes. * they encourage competition, which leads to better implementations * they help the language reach new niches (e.g. on the web; in embedded systems; ...) * they encourage language standardization, which reduces risk to users. No * they dilute community effort -- only so many people can write good compilers and runtimes * they can lead to fragmentation and incompatible code as languages diverge, increasing risk to the success of the language overall. * they confuse users, further hurting adoption. Particularly beginners have trouble knowing which implementation is a good choice.