4 ms·

I don't want a community - I want a programming language. Preferably one that doesn't throw away billions of lines of existing code just because.

doesnt_know 1y ago
There are countless dead programming languages without communities you can pick then.
- rusk 1y ago
  Ruby and Perl are great examples of massively popular languages that withered because the language/platform outpaced the community. If the first question you’re asking yourself looking at a code base is “what version is this/do I know this version” then that language is not facilitating you. The successful languages are ones where “the community” prioritises backward compatibility. Java, C, Python have backward compatibility spanning decades. There’s a few discontinuities (lambdas in Java 8, Python 3, C++) but in most cases there’s a clear mapping back to the original. Python 3 is an exception to this but the migration window was something like 15 years… Busy engineers, scientists and academics have little interest in keeping up to date with language features. A computer and a programming language are a tool for a job and the source code is just an intermediate artifact. These are your “community”, and the stakeholders in your success.
  - melagonster 1y ago
    Perl have almost perfect backward compatibility, but small community and bad renown are not so good.
    - DonHopkins 1y ago
      Backwards compatibility is terrible if what you're being backwards compatible with is terrible.
    - rusk 1y ago
      Isn’t the actual “platform” itself fragmented these days? Different language versions, different libraries, different “engine”? I dunno it was 20 years ago I jumped ship when they tried shoehorning object oriented semantics into it. Eugh.
      - melagonster 1y ago
        I do not really know which event you mentioned. But if you use the current version of perl interpreter. It still work for most of old versions. And new features keep safe for old perl.
    - hnfong 1y ago
      Perl doesn't have "perfect backward compatibility" in the normal sense of the word. There is only Perl 5 which is perfectly compatible since it hasn't changed for 25+ years (which is how they achieved "compatibility" -- by not changing), and there's Perl 6 which isn't backward compatible and nobody really uses it.
      - melagonster 1y ago
        I know people don't like Perl, I just want to add some info here. The Perl 5 Porters have restarted adding new features at 15 years ago. It has progressed from version 5.20 to 5.42. Although the speed is slower than popular languages, they are maintaining backward compatibility while adding new features. Perl6 had been renamed to new language, Raku.
      - raiph 1y ago
        > Perl 5 ... hasn't changed for 25+ years. A major new version of Perl ships regularly. A few weeks ago the latest major new version shipped. From the 2025 changes document: > Perl 5.42.0 represents approximately 13 months of development since Perl 5.40.0 and contains approximately 280,000 lines of changes across 1,600 files from 65 authors. Skipping back 5 major new versions (to 2020): > Perl 5.32.0 represents approximately 13 months of development since Perl 5.30.0 and contains approximately 220,000 lines of changes across 1,800 files from 89 authors. 2015: > Perl 5.22.0 represents approximately 12 months of development since Perl 5.20.0 and contains approximately 590,000 lines of changes across 2,400 files from 94 authors. 2010: > Perl 5.16.0 represents approximately 12 months of development since Perl 5.14.0 and contains approximately 590,000 lines of changes across 2,500 files from 139 authors. There's been well over 10 million lines of code changed in just the core Perl codebase over the last 25 years reflecting huge changes in Perl. ---- Perl 6 ... isn't backward compatible Raku runs around 80% of CPAN (Perl modules), including ones that use XS (poking into the guts of the Perl 5 binary) without requiring any change whatsoever. (The remaining 20% are so Perl 5 specific as to be meaningless in Raku. For example, source filters which convert Perl 5 code into different Perl 5 code.) ---- But you are right about one thing; no one you know cares about backwards compatibility, otherwise you'd know the difference between what you think you know, and what is actually true.
  - nottorp 1y ago
    How have they withered? Does every programming language have to compete for world domination via cancerous growth? I thought that only applied to VC backed startups and public companies if the startups survive...
    - rusk 1y ago
      They’re not actively used in any circles I move in. The fact that your back is up suggests you have something invested in these antiquated niche tools.
      - nottorp 1y ago
        Seriously? I tried Perl only once ever in my life time and I've never done Ruby. Doesn't mean I have to deny them the right to exist because they don't have a "community*". * more like a religion for some programming languages.
        rusk 1y ago
        They have a right to exist. But there is strength in community. Successful platforms facilitate this and provide a means for participants to exceed the sum of there parts. This can in turn fuel development of the platform therefore helping keep it relevant. In recent times we call this “the network effect” and it applies to more than just social media.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    What makes you think Ruby withered? It has been stagnant, but not withered.
    - rusk 1y ago
      The community withered. 10-15 years ago the cries of “Ruby” “Ruby” “Ruby” were deafening. I used Ruby and I really enjoyed and I thought I would leave Python behind but it but it never went anywhere from there. Somewhere around 3.x I think there were a load of breaking changes introduced and I imagine lots of people like myself just went back to using more stable platforms.
  - xdfgh1112 1y ago
    Have you used them? Perl has version tags in source code and everything is feature gated including the stdlib. Python does none of that. The stdlib changes constantly and just looking at source code gives you no indication if you can run it with your installed python version.
    - simonw 1y ago
      > Perl has version tags in source code and everything is feature gated including the stdlib. Python does none of that. from __future__ import annotations > just looking at source code gives you no indication if you can run it with your installed python version requires-python = ">=3.9"
      - mdaniel 1y ago
        I don't believe that "from __future__" is the future-proofing you think it is, they just named it that way to be cute - a hypothetical 3.19 version couldn't even use it, since it's just a normal python import $ python3.13 -c 'from __future__ import awesome_feature' File "<string>", line 1 SyntaxError: future feature awesome_feature is not defined the very idea of "future feature is not defined" is insaneo Anyway, I'd guess what they intend is try: from __future__ import fever_dream except SyntaxError: fever_dream = None because python really gets off on conditional imports
        simonw 1y ago
        I was responding to the "Python does none of that" by pointing out that Python does indeed have features to help introduce new capabilities in a thoughtful way - I know it's not the same thing as something like conditional imports.
      - chromatic 1y ago
        I prefer Perl's approach for both: use v5.40; .... That's explicit, tied to a specific version, and executable code which can be scoped to a single source file. (I'd argued for that feature for years with my `Modern::Perl` feature bundle; glad to see that can be deprecated now.)
nromiun 1y ago
The great thing is that you don't have to join any community. Python is my favorite language and ever since I got flamed for asking a technical question in their subreddit I stopped going there. There are hardly any non-toxic programming communities out there. And if you value backward compatibility over everything else you can look at C and C++.
- musicale 1y ago
  Java also has a pretty good compatibility story. I still use python for some applications, but it has created a lot of headaches, and also has the problem of being really slow. YMMV, but usually if you were to rewrite your c++ code in python, you would find that you need 10x as many servers (or likely more) to get the same performance.
  - nromiun 1y ago
    Only if you use CPython. I use PyPy3 most of the time and I get the same performance as Java and Go. C++ is still faster than PyPy3, but not 10x faster. That is good enough for me to not deal with the messy C++ syntax.
  - lenkite 1y ago
    Java community is strangely nice. Bog standard enterprise software developers are nearly always polite.
defraudbah 1y ago
that's what Delphi said
ModernMech 1y ago
Unfortunately, a programming language without a community is nothing, because more than anything programming languages are languages, and a language is dead without a community that speaks it.
- linhns 1y ago
  Exactly, that’s why Bjarne Strousoup says there are only 2 types of languages, one that people complain about, and one nobody uses
zahlman 1y ago
Python 2 code was absolutely not "thrown away just because". Nobody made your interpreter stop working; it was never on a cloud service or anything like that. It just stopped receiving bugfixes from core team (it's open source so everyone was and is free to take over maintenance) and third-party tool and infrastructure support (notably, PyPI) doesn't take it into consideration any more. Further, the changes were made for very good reasons, such as allowing beginners to accept user input on day 1 without opening ACE exploits in their programs, and having plain double-quoted string literals actually produce a string rather than an immutable byte buffer that vaguely assumes a generic code-page encoding, except for the contexts where it will complain if it's not plain ASCII (admittedly, this is still an improvement over trying to handle text in C with only the standard library), and making sure that decoding operations don't produce encoding errors and vice-versa, and making `isinstance(1<<64, int)` give the expected `True` result, and making `except` syntax make sense, and making sure there aren't two fundamentally different kinds of user-defined class. And by making these changes, we actually got Python 3 in about 2.5 years (4.5 if you allow for the first couple of releases having some issues figuring out the string literal transition and other such details — I agree they were premature) and were able to offer another 11 (9) for everyone to migrate. Whereas with Raku the entire 13.5 (more like 15.5) year period was spent on design and implementation, and now there hasn't been a new stable release for almost 5 years.
- musicale 1y ago
  From my perspective (suffering through the python 3 transition and living with ongoing changes in 3.x), compatibility was - and is - poorly handled. Many things can and should be done to ease the maintenance burden - things like intelligent defaults, compatibility features and libraries, and not doing stupid things like ripping out the print statement (which could have coexisted with a print() function) with no recourse. Unfortunately, python's developers seem to have demonstrated tremendous contempt for the users of the language, and for existing code bases. Other languages (though not all.... <cough, swift>) have actual language specifications and standards (that even keep working as runtime systems evolve), and are not so keen on throwing users and their code off a cliff. Platforms should absorb pain so that their users don't have to, and avoid introducing breaking changes that multiply pain across an entire user base. Apple (also known for arrogance combined with contempt for their developers) also gets this wrong, and routinely breaks iOS and swift apps every year.

doesnt_know 1y ago

There are countless dead programming languages without communities you can pick then.

rusk 1y ago
Ruby and Perl are great examples of massively popular languages that withered because the language/platform outpaced the community. If the first question you’re asking yourself looking at a code base is “what version is this/do I know this version” then that language is not facilitating you. The successful languages are ones where “the community” prioritises backward compatibility. Java, C, Python have backward compatibility spanning decades. There’s a few discontinuities (lambdas in Java 8, Python 3, C++) but in most cases there’s a clear mapping back to the original. Python 3 is an exception to this but the migration window was something like 15 years… Busy engineers, scientists and academics have little interest in keeping up to date with language features. A computer and a programming language are a tool for a job and the source code is just an intermediate artifact. These are your “community”, and the stakeholders in your success.
- melagonster 1y ago
  Perl have almost perfect backward compatibility, but small community and bad renown are not so good.
  - DonHopkins 1y ago
    Backwards compatibility is terrible if what you're being backwards compatible with is terrible.
  - rusk 1y ago
    Isn’t the actual “platform” itself fragmented these days? Different language versions, different libraries, different “engine”? I dunno it was 20 years ago I jumped ship when they tried shoehorning object oriented semantics into it. Eugh.
    - melagonster 1y ago
      I do not really know which event you mentioned. But if you use the current version of perl interpreter. It still work for most of old versions. And new features keep safe for old perl.
  - hnfong 1y ago
    Perl doesn't have "perfect backward compatibility" in the normal sense of the word. There is only Perl 5 which is perfectly compatible since it hasn't changed for 25+ years (which is how they achieved "compatibility" -- by not changing), and there's Perl 6 which isn't backward compatible and nobody really uses it.
    - melagonster 1y ago
      I know people don't like Perl, I just want to add some info here. The Perl 5 Porters have restarted adding new features at 15 years ago. It has progressed from version 5.20 to 5.42. Although the speed is slower than popular languages, they are maintaining backward compatibility while adding new features. Perl6 had been renamed to new language, Raku.
    - raiph 1y ago
      > Perl 5 ... hasn't changed for 25+ years. A major new version of Perl ships regularly. A few weeks ago the latest major new version shipped. From the 2025 changes document: > Perl 5.42.0 represents approximately 13 months of development since Perl 5.40.0 and contains approximately 280,000 lines of changes across 1,600 files from 65 authors. Skipping back 5 major new versions (to 2020): > Perl 5.32.0 represents approximately 13 months of development since Perl 5.30.0 and contains approximately 220,000 lines of changes across 1,800 files from 89 authors. 2015: > Perl 5.22.0 represents approximately 12 months of development since Perl 5.20.0 and contains approximately 590,000 lines of changes across 2,400 files from 94 authors. 2010: > Perl 5.16.0 represents approximately 12 months of development since Perl 5.14.0 and contains approximately 590,000 lines of changes across 2,500 files from 139 authors. There's been well over 10 million lines of code changed in just the core Perl codebase over the last 25 years reflecting huge changes in Perl. ---- Perl 6 ... isn't backward compatible Raku runs around 80% of CPAN (Perl modules), including ones that use XS (poking into the guts of the Perl 5 binary) without requiring any change whatsoever. (The remaining 20% are so Perl 5 specific as to be meaningless in Raku. For example, source filters which convert Perl 5 code into different Perl 5 code.) ---- But you are right about one thing; no one you know cares about backwards compatibility, otherwise you'd know the difference between what you think you know, and what is actually true.
- nottorp 1y ago
  How have they withered? Does every programming language have to compete for world domination via cancerous growth? I thought that only applied to VC backed startups and public companies if the startups survive...
  - rusk 1y ago
    They’re not actively used in any circles I move in. The fact that your back is up suggests you have something invested in these antiquated niche tools.
    - nottorp 1y ago
      Seriously? I tried Perl only once ever in my life time and I've never done Ruby. Doesn't mean I have to deny them the right to exist because they don't have a "community*". * more like a religion for some programming languages.
      - rusk 1y ago
        They have a right to exist. But there is strength in community. Successful platforms facilitate this and provide a means for participants to exceed the sum of there parts. This can in turn fuel development of the platform therefore helping keep it relevant. In recent times we call this “the network effect” and it applies to more than just social media.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- wiseowise 1y ago
  What makes you think Ruby withered? It has been stagnant, but not withered.
  - rusk 1y ago
    The community withered. 10-15 years ago the cries of “Ruby” “Ruby” “Ruby” were deafening. I used Ruby and I really enjoyed and I thought I would leave Python behind but it but it never went anywhere from there. Somewhere around 3.x I think there were a load of breaking changes introduced and I imagine lots of people like myself just went back to using more stable platforms.
- xdfgh1112 1y ago
  Have you used them? Perl has version tags in source code and everything is feature gated including the stdlib. Python does none of that. The stdlib changes constantly and just looking at source code gives you no indication if you can run it with your installed python version.
  - simonw 1y ago
    > Perl has version tags in source code and everything is feature gated including the stdlib. Python does none of that. from __future__ import annotations > just looking at source code gives you no indication if you can run it with your installed python version requires-python = ">=3.9"
    - mdaniel 1y ago
      I don't believe that "from __future__" is the future-proofing you think it is, they just named it that way to be cute - a hypothetical 3.19 version couldn't even use it, since it's just a normal python import $ python3.13 -c 'from __future__ import awesome_feature' File "<string>", line 1 SyntaxError: future feature awesome_feature is not defined the very idea of "future feature is not defined" is insaneo Anyway, I'd guess what they intend is try: from __future__ import fever_dream except SyntaxError: fever_dream = None because python really gets off on conditional imports
      - simonw 1y ago
        I was responding to the "Python does none of that" by pointing out that Python does indeed have features to help introduce new capabilities in a thoughtful way - I know it's not the same thing as something like conditional imports.
    - chromatic 1y ago
      I prefer Perl's approach for both: use v5.40; .... That's explicit, tied to a specific version, and executable code which can be scoped to a single source file. (I'd argued for that feature for years with my `Modern::Perl` feature bundle; glad to see that can be deprecated now.)

nromiun 1y ago

The great thing is that you don't have to join any community. Python is my favorite language and ever since I got flamed for asking a technical question in their subreddit I stopped going there. There are hardly any non-toxic programming communities out there. And if you value backward compatibility over everything else you can look at C and C++.

musicale 1y ago
Java also has a pretty good compatibility story. I still use python for some applications, but it has created a lot of headaches, and also has the problem of being really slow. YMMV, but usually if you were to rewrite your c++ code in python, you would find that you need 10x as many servers (or likely more) to get the same performance.
- nromiun 1y ago
  Only if you use CPython. I use PyPy3 most of the time and I get the same performance as Java and Go. C++ is still faster than PyPy3, but not 10x faster. That is good enough for me to not deal with the messy C++ syntax.
- lenkite 1y ago
  Java community is strangely nice. Bog standard enterprise software developers are nearly always polite.

defraudbah 1y ago

that's what Delphi said

ModernMech 1y ago

Unfortunately, a programming language without a community is nothing, because more than anything programming languages are languages, and a language is dead without a community that speaks it.

linhns 1y ago
Exactly, that’s why Bjarne Strousoup says there are only 2 types of languages, one that people complain about, and one nobody uses

zahlman 1y ago

Python 2 code was absolutely not "thrown away just because". Nobody made your interpreter stop working; it was never on a cloud service or anything like that. It just stopped receiving bugfixes from core team (it's open source so everyone was and is free to take over maintenance) and third-party tool and infrastructure support (notably, PyPI) doesn't take it into consideration any more. Further, the changes were made for very good reasons, such as allowing beginners to accept user input on day 1 without opening ACE exploits in their programs, and having plain double-quoted string literals actually produce a string rather than an immutable byte buffer that vaguely assumes a generic code-page encoding, except for the contexts where it will complain if it's not plain ASCII (admittedly, this is still an improvement over trying to handle text in C with only the standard library), and making sure that decoding operations don't produce encoding errors and vice-versa, and making `isinstance(1<<64, int)` give the expected `True` result, and making `except` syntax make sense, and making sure there aren't two fundamentally different kinds of user-defined class. And by making these changes, we actually got Python 3 in about 2.5 years (4.5 if you allow for the first couple of releases having some issues figuring out the string literal transition and other such details — I agree they were premature) and were able to offer another 11 (9) for everyone to migrate. Whereas with Raku the entire 13.5 (more like 15.5) year period was spent on design and implementation, and now there hasn't been a new stable release for almost 5 years.

musicale 1y ago
From my perspective (suffering through the python 3 transition and living with ongoing changes in 3.x), compatibility was - and is - poorly handled. Many things can and should be done to ease the maintenance burden - things like intelligent defaults, compatibility features and libraries, and not doing stupid things like ripping out the print statement (which could have coexisted with a print() function) with no recourse. Unfortunately, python's developers seem to have demonstrated tremendous contempt for the users of the language, and for existing code bases. Other languages (though not all.... <cough, swift>) have actual language specifications and standards (that even keep working as runtime systems evolve), and are not so keen on throwing users and their code off a cliff. Platforms should absorb pain so that their users don't have to, and avoid introducing breaking changes that multiply pain across an entire user base. Apple (also known for arrogance combined with contempt for their developers) also gets this wrong, and routinely breaks iOS and swift apps every year.