4 ms·

> and yet it’s basically a hobby language. The difference between academia languages such as ocaml or haskell and industry languages such as Java or C# is hund

by pyrale 1y ago

> and yet it’s basically a hobby language. The difference between academia languages such as ocaml or haskell and industry languages such as Java or C# is hundreds of millions of dollar in advertising. It's not limited to the academy: plenty of languages from other horizons failed, that weren't backed by companies with a vested interest in you using their language. You should probably not infer too much from a language's success or failure.

estebank 1y ago
You're making it sound like the success of a language is determined purely by its advertising budget by pointing at languages that had financial backing, which disregards that financial backing allows for more resources to solve technical problems. Java and C# have excellent developer tools which wouldn't have existed in their current state without lots of money being thrown around, and the languages' adoption trajectory wouldn't have looked the way they did if their tooling hasn't been as good as it was. A new language with 3 people behind it can come up with great ideas and excellent execution, but if you can't get enough of the scaffolding built in order to gain development momentum and adoption, then it is very hard to become mainstream, and money can help with that.
- pyrale 1y ago
  > which disregards that financial backing allows for more resources to solve technical problems. No, I'm not talking about financial backing in general, I'm talking specifically about advertising the language. There's no doubt that a big ecosystem helps a lot, Python is a good proof of that ; but this is not what i was talking about.
coldtea 1y ago
C, C++, Python, Perl, Ruby, didn't have "millions of dollars in advertising", and yet. Java and C# are the only one's that fit this. Go and Rust had some publicity from being associated with Google and Mozilla, but they both caught on without "millions of dollars in advertising" too. Endorsement by big companies like MS came much later for Rust, and Google only started devoting some PR to Go after several years of it already catching momentum.
- Narishma 1y ago
  I don't know about the others but C and C++ certainly did. They had a number of commercial compiler vendors advertising them in the 80s and 90s when they established themselves.
fooker 1y ago
> hundreds of millions of dollar Yes. > in advertising No, in hiring 500 compiler and tool developers, developing and supporting libraries, optimizing it for niche use cases.
- pyrale 1y ago
  The Java ecosystem has benefited from way more than that. I was specifically refering to advertising. For instance this kind of headlines [1]. [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2003/06/09/sun_preps_500m_java_brand/ https://www.theregister.com/2003/06/09/sun_preps_500m_java_b...
  - fooker 1y ago
    This never played out, Sun ran out of money.
crote 1y ago
The main difference is the ecosystem. The Haskell community has always focused primarily on the computer science part, so the developer experience has mostly been neglected. They have been unable to attract a large enough hobbyist community to develop the libraries and tooling you'd take for granted with any other language, and no company is willing to pay for it out of pocket either. Even load-bearing libraries feel like a half-finished master's thesis, because that's usually what it is. No amount of advertising is going to propel Haskell to a mainstream language. If it wants to succeed (and let's be honest, it probably doesn't), it's going to need an investment of millions of developer-hours in libraries and tooling. No matter how pretty and elegant the language may be, if you have to reinvent the wheel every time you go beyond "hello world" you're going to think twice before considering it for production code.
biorach 1y ago
> The difference between academia languages such as ocaml or haskell and industry languages such as Java or C# is hundreds of millions of dollar in advertising Rust is a significant counterexample

by pyrale 1y ago

estebank 1y ago

You're making it sound like the success of a language is determined purely by its advertising budget by pointing at languages that had financial backing, which disregards that financial backing allows for more resources to solve technical problems. Java and C# have excellent developer tools which wouldn't have existed in their current state without lots of money being thrown around, and the languages' adoption trajectory wouldn't have looked the way they did if their tooling hasn't been as good as it was. A new language with 3 people behind it can come up with great ideas and excellent execution, but if you can't get enough of the scaffolding built in order to gain development momentum and adoption, then it is very hard to become mainstream, and money can help with that.

pyrale 1y ago
> which disregards that financial backing allows for more resources to solve technical problems. No, I'm not talking about financial backing in general, I'm talking specifically about advertising the language. There's no doubt that a big ecosystem helps a lot, Python is a good proof of that ; but this is not what i was talking about.

coldtea 1y ago

C, C++, Python, Perl, Ruby, didn't have "millions of dollars in advertising", and yet. Java and C# are the only one's that fit this. Go and Rust had some publicity from being associated with Google and Mozilla, but they both caught on without "millions of dollars in advertising" too. Endorsement by big companies like MS came much later for Rust, and Google only started devoting some PR to Go after several years of it already catching momentum.

Narishma 1y ago
I don't know about the others but C and C++ certainly did. They had a number of commercial compiler vendors advertising them in the 80s and 90s when they established themselves.

fooker 1y ago

> hundreds of millions of dollar Yes. > in advertising No, in hiring 500 compiler and tool developers, developing and supporting libraries, optimizing it for niche use cases.

pyrale 1y ago
The Java ecosystem has benefited from way more than that. I was specifically refering to advertising. For instance this kind of headlines [1]. [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2003/06/09/sun_preps_500m_java_brand/ https://www.theregister.com/2003/06/09/sun_preps_500m_java_b...
- fooker 1y ago
  This never played out, Sun ran out of money.

crote 1y ago

The main difference is the ecosystem. The Haskell community has always focused primarily on the computer science part, so the developer experience has mostly been neglected. They have been unable to attract a large enough hobbyist community to develop the libraries and tooling you'd take for granted with any other language, and no company is willing to pay for it out of pocket either. Even load-bearing libraries feel like a half-finished master's thesis, because that's usually what it is. No amount of advertising is going to propel Haskell to a mainstream language. If it wants to succeed (and let's be honest, it probably doesn't), it's going to need an investment of millions of developer-hours in libraries and tooling. No matter how pretty and elegant the language may be, if you have to reinvent the wheel every time you go beyond "hello world" you're going to think twice before considering it for production code.

biorach 1y ago

> The difference between academia languages such as ocaml or haskell and industry languages such as Java or C# is hundreds of millions of dollar in advertising Rust is a significant counterexample