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I think that it is hard to market a new "pragmatic" language because the pragmatic decision in most cases is to use an existing language that you already know,

I think that it is hard to market a new "pragmatic" language because the pragmatic decision in most cases is to use an existing language that you already know, that has a community around it with all it's accumulated wisdom (documentation, tutorials, blog posts, StackOverflow Q&A), rich library ecosystem etc. The main point of "killer feature" is not to make the language more "hypeable" but to give a potential user a clear reason why the benefits of learning your language will outweigh the costs of using a less mature or less popular technology.

wavemode 2y ago
I think the best approach is to make your language seamlessly interoperable with some existing language.
- throwaway313373 2y ago
  I guess it does help by making the cost of adoption lower. But my main point is that being an early adopter of a non-mainstream tech is fundamentally unpragmatic and usually people are driven to try something new by desire to try something __cool__ not by pragmatic considerations.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Well that usually has significant downsides too so it's not as simple as "do that". But yeah if you can do that it's a big benefit.
- thih9 2y ago
  The success of TypeScript, a syntactic superset of JS and recently the fastest growing programming language, seems to confirm it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ksp-atlas 2y ago
  That is one thing that could be a killer feature and I like Zig for it, but I can see myself using a language without that level of interoperability if it has a good enough killer feature set
baranul 2y ago
One of the best ways for a developer to plead their case for using their language, is to have a book written about it. That's where to teach people how to use the language, show in code the advantages of using it, and elaborate in detail why its a better language. If the language doesn't at least have a book written on it, then it can be argued it's way too early to take the language seriously. Some of the reasons why the language has not reached the stage to be written about: still too unstable, few followers, or still making a lot of breaking changes. Other reasons, like laziness or arrogance, are equally not good. Some of these new hyped languages like Odin, C3, hare, beef, pony, etc... They get a lot of continuous attention on here and specific other places, but then when we go to find out more about them, there is little of real substance. Their GitHub has few stars, few contributors, no Wikipedia page, not a thing about them on Amazon, etc... At least start with step 1. Where is the book on this programming language? Would be nice to be able to actually read or see more than just a blog entry or an ad.

wavemode 2y ago

I think the best approach is to make your language seamlessly interoperable with some existing language.

throwaway313373 2y ago
I guess it does help by making the cost of adoption lower. But my main point is that being an early adopter of a non-mainstream tech is fundamentally unpragmatic and usually people are driven to try something new by desire to try something __cool__ not by pragmatic considerations.
IshKebab 2y ago
Well that usually has significant downsides too so it's not as simple as "do that". But yeah if you can do that it's a big benefit.
thih9 2y ago
The success of TypeScript, a syntactic superset of JS and recently the fastest growing programming language, seems to confirm it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ksp-atlas 2y ago
That is one thing that could be a killer feature and I like Zig for it, but I can see myself using a language without that level of interoperability if it has a good enough killer feature set

baranul 2y ago

One of the best ways for a developer to plead their case for using their language, is to have a book written about it. That's where to teach people how to use the language, show in code the advantages of using it, and elaborate in detail why its a better language. If the language doesn't at least have a book written on it, then it can be argued it's way too early to take the language seriously. Some of the reasons why the language has not reached the stage to be written about: still too unstable, few followers, or still making a lot of breaking changes. Other reasons, like laziness or arrogance, are equally not good. Some of these new hyped languages like Odin, C3, hare, beef, pony, etc... They get a lot of continuous attention on here and specific other places, but then when we go to find out more about them, there is little of real substance. Their GitHub has few stars, few contributors, no Wikipedia page, not a thing about them on Amazon, etc... At least start with step 1. Where is the book on this programming language? Would be nice to be able to actually read or see more than just a blog entry or an ad.