5 ms·

This article makes Odin sound extremely well-known. I've never heard of it before, and I feel like I keep up with programming topics pretty diligently. Admitted

This article makes Odin sound extremely well-known. I've never heard of it before, and I feel like I keep up with programming topics pretty diligently. Admittedly I don't work at the systems programming layer, but I've definitely heard plenty about Rust and c++ topics. Curious if others feel similarly, or maybe I just happened to miss it?

panzi 3mo ago
I am interested in programming language topics and I certainly have heard of Odin and have seen a couple of interviews with Ginger Bill. Same with Zig, Rust, Jai, C++ etc. I haven't used much of these (only C++ and Rust out of these), though. But I find that stuff interesting.
andai 3mo ago
The author protested the framing, but it's very much a game-dev oriented language. In fact, it's the most pleasant language for game development I have ever used. It comes with all sorts of "batteries included" in that direction, possibly more than any other existing language. (Well, I still didn't get my Jai invite, so who knows ;) Odin was a major influence on Jai.)
- jibal 3mo ago
  The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. > Odin was a major influence on Jai. This is a popular joke because of the release timeline. The reality is the inverse, and Ginger Bill has acknowledged the influence of Jai.
  - wtetzner 3mo ago
    > The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. The author knows the intention of the language better than anyone else, but that doesn't mean it isn't especially game dev oriented.
    - dismalaf 3mo ago
      Is C++ a game oriented language because most game engines and games are written in it?
      - andai 3mo ago
        Yeah oriented might be the wrong word here. "Surprisngly well suited for the job" is more like it. It was very ergonomic. In fact, I ended up translating my Odin game to several other languages and the experience was quite painful. (That's one way to measure the quality of a language! How much it hurts to port code out of it.)
    - jibal 3mo ago
      Ginger Bill directly addresses this erroneous argument in TFA: > Many people think Odin is "just for games" at the moment, but that tells you more about the people who say that than Odin itself. This is especially true when gamedev is pretty much the most wide domain possible where you will do virtually every area of programming possible. > Odin is a general purpose language; is capable of being used in numerous different areas from application development, servers, graphics, games, kernels, CLI/TUIs, etc.
      - wtetzner 3mo ago
        > The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. ^ I was only addressing this comment, not the specifics of Odin. > Odin is a general purpose language; is capable of being used in numerous different areas from application development, servers, graphics, games, kernels, CLI/TUIs, etc. I would argue that being capable of doing anything is not in conflict with being oriented around something specific. Any Turing complete language is capable of those things. Again, I don't even know Odin, so I'm not addressing whether or not it is game dev oriented. Only that the arguments themselves don't seem sound. EDIT: grammar/formatting
  - andai 3mo ago
    I clearly remember Jonathan Blow talking about how Jai's syntax was influenced by his conversations with Bill. But it was 10+ years ago, so I might have gotten it mixed up. I think the influence ended up going both ways eventually though.
    - jibal 3mo ago
      Yes, you have it mixed up ... Jai development started 2 years before Odin. And the claim was > Odin was a major influence on Jai which simply isn't true. Just google it, e.g., https://handmade.network/forums/t/1338-the_odin_programming_language https://handmade.network/forums/t/1338-the_odin_programming_... https://www.reddit.com/r/Jai/comments/1j2idvz/is_odin_kind_of_a_rip_off_of_jai/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Jai/comments/1j2idvz/is_odin_kind_o... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317815
recursivecaveat 3mo ago
I would consider it extremely obscure overall. A large majority of programmers would not be aware of its existence. At the same time there are clearly much less popular languages with articles so it is kindof weird to push to delete. (eg: random scheme implementation w/ no releases in 20 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISC) I would say that wikipedia broadly favors programming languages as far as notability. Like most nerd/geek things their footprint skews toward the internet, and people who enjoy geek stuff are more likely to be wikipedia admins than the general population.
- nvme0n1p1 3mo ago
  SISC is there because it's not notable, so the busybodies haven't even noticed the page exists. Odin, however, is notable, and that put it on their radar as a target for attacking its notability.
  - stymaar 3mo ago
    And here's the persecution LARPing the article talks about.
    - HappyPanacea 3mo ago
      So why is that article not deleted yet?
      - lambdaone 3mo ago
        I see it's been nominated for deletion today. Looking at it, it's been marked for attention for two years, so it's not as if people haven't had time to do anything about it.
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  This is an argument for deleting those non-notable articles as well, not retaining other non-notable articles.
- 3mo ago
dismalaf 3mo ago
It's kind of niche but is getting bigger. The Discord server has 10k members, the biggest(?) Twitch programming streamer has been using it recently, JangaFX is big enough to be used by AAA game companies and a few large film studios, and I'm sure there's plenty of users who aren't on the Discord server. If you're comparing it to Rust/C++ you must live in a cave or something. So yes. It's not that big. But it's probably in the top 10 of hyped languages of the current year. There's a bunch of languages from the 60's to 90's on Wikipedia that have probably never had as many users or software shipped as Odin.
steveklabnik 3mo ago
I feel like if you’re into programming languages as a hobby, the chances you know of Odin are pretty high. Not everyone can know everything, of course, but my impression is that it punches above average on notability within the niche.
bobbytheblkbear 3mo ago
[flagged]
jibal 3mo ago
Odin is extremely well known to every human being who keeps up on programming language development, along with Zig, Nim, D, Jai, V, Crystal, Carbon, and others. "programming topics" isn't relevant.
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  I keep up with PL development, and I am only vaguely aware of Odin (and same for Jai and V). (But this isn’t the point: lots of programmers know about relatively obscure thing, but that does not itself make them notable. Notability is a well-defined property on Wikipedia.)
  - jibal 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - woodruffw 3mo ago
      Thank you, that’s very persuasive.
    - jibal 3mo ago
      What should be persuasive is a simple logical inference from the statements made to my conclusion. From the article: > If you are terminally online on programming circles, you most likely have heard of Odin, it's so obvious that I don't feel like I have to make a case at all. It has been covered by the streamer Primeagen and it's used commercially by JangaFX, that's pretty notable to me. If you are active in discussions of other systems programming languages like Zig, Nim, Jai, D, V, Hare, C3, etc. then you have heard of Odin. If someone hasn't heard of all of those languages then it's an objective fact that they don't "keep up with PL development". See for instance https://dev.to/dimension-ai/13-languages-are-challenging-c-most-fail-only-five-stack-up-2no5 https://dev.to/dimension-ai/13-languages-are-challenging-c-m... Deletion of this article is an indication of inadequate processes at Wikipedia for determining the notability of certain sorts of subjects. > Notability is a well-defined property on Wikipedia. This is not true ... if it were then there would not be disputes about notability. And simply reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability makes it clear that it is not "a well-defined property". And beyond that, one of the points being discussed is that Wikipedia's criteria for notability have not adapted to the current state of affairs. If Wikipedia did have a rigid "well-defined property", that would be a mistake. As GingerBill is quoted as saying in TFA: > Odin is now being used by dozens of companies, thousands of public projects, and over a million hobbyists. By a sensible rational evaluation, that makes it notable.
loeg 3mo ago
It's relatively well known? Certainly not mainstream.
krautsauer 3mo ago
It's been here a few times, maybe 4-6 times in the past year?
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
3836293648 3mo ago
I think you just happened to miss it. It's very commonly mentioned in the new systems space, alongside Jonathan Blow's jai.
firesteelrain 3mo ago
I have only heard about it because of HN.
baranul 3mo ago
You never hearing about Odin, is an example of why its article was rejected by Wikipedia, because they failed at providing reputable references. The languages that you likely know of, often are corporate backed, with large marketing budgets and backdoor deals to help saturate traditional and social media. Newer languages, not of corporate origins, usually struggle to achieve public awareness or are purposefully choked out by negative propaganda and negative marketing tactics being unleashed against them. To achieve enough public awareness and momentum, they often need a certain level of luck, where a number of factors fall their way.
klibertp 3mo ago
> I've never heard of it before [...] but I've definitely heard plenty about Rust and c++ topics. Programming is a very broad and deep discipline. If you're a programmer for some time, chances are you know of very niche projects (10 stars on GH) in your domain/stack/platform. It says nothing about your familiarity with much less niche (10k stars on GH) projects outside your domain/stack/etc. The only ways for you to learn about Odin are to be interested in programming languages in general or to be working in the specific niche Odin tries to conquer (+ some luck). In other words, a "normal programmer" not knowing about one of literally hundreds of languages out there is expected, but says little about the notability of said language. > maybe I just happened to miss it? You did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970800 But that's normal - it's impossible to keep track of domains you're not interested in. Programming language development (for languages that don't pay your bills) is not something programmers need to follow. It's a conscious choice to become interested in this very specific, deep, and niche domain. If you were interested in PLs, you'd almost certainly know about Odin - you probably still wouldn't know Odin itself, unless you're specifically interested in "ergonomic, low-level C replacement" languages and, for some reason, concluded that Zig is not for you.

panzi 3mo ago

I am interested in programming language topics and I certainly have heard of Odin and have seen a couple of interviews with Ginger Bill. Same with Zig, Rust, Jai, C++ etc. I haven't used much of these (only C++ and Rust out of these), though. But I find that stuff interesting.

andai 3mo ago

The author protested the framing, but it's very much a game-dev oriented language. In fact, it's the most pleasant language for game development I have ever used. It comes with all sorts of "batteries included" in that direction, possibly more than any other existing language. (Well, I still didn't get my Jai invite, so who knows ;) Odin was a major influence on Jai.)

jibal 3mo ago
The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. > Odin was a major influence on Jai. This is a popular joke because of the release timeline. The reality is the inverse, and Ginger Bill has acknowledged the influence of Jai.
- wtetzner 3mo ago
  > The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. The author knows the intention of the language better than anyone else, but that doesn't mean it isn't especially game dev oriented.
  - dismalaf 3mo ago
    Is C++ a game oriented language because most game engines and games are written in it?
    - andai 3mo ago
      Yeah oriented might be the wrong word here. "Surprisngly well suited for the job" is more like it. It was very ergonomic. In fact, I ended up translating my Odin game to several other languages and the experience was quite painful. (That's one way to measure the quality of a language! How much it hurts to port code out of it.)
  - jibal 3mo ago
    Ginger Bill directly addresses this erroneous argument in TFA: > Many people think Odin is "just for games" at the moment, but that tells you more about the people who say that than Odin itself. This is especially true when gamedev is pretty much the most wide domain possible where you will do virtually every area of programming possible. > Odin is a general purpose language; is capable of being used in numerous different areas from application development, servers, graphics, games, kernels, CLI/TUIs, etc.
    - wtetzner 3mo ago
      > The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. ^ I was only addressing this comment, not the specifics of Odin. > Odin is a general purpose language; is capable of being used in numerous different areas from application development, servers, graphics, games, kernels, CLI/TUIs, etc. I would argue that being capable of doing anything is not in conflict with being oriented around something specific. Any Turing complete language is capable of those things. Again, I don't even know Odin, so I'm not addressing whether or not it is game dev oriented. Only that the arguments themselves don't seem sound. EDIT: grammar/formatting
- andai 3mo ago
  I clearly remember Jonathan Blow talking about how Jai's syntax was influenced by his conversations with Bill. But it was 10+ years ago, so I might have gotten it mixed up. I think the influence ended up going both ways eventually though.
  - jibal 3mo ago
    Yes, you have it mixed up ... Jai development started 2 years before Odin. And the claim was > Odin was a major influence on Jai which simply isn't true. Just google it, e.g., https://handmade.network/forums/t/1338-the_odin_programming_language https://handmade.network/forums/t/1338-the_odin_programming_... https://www.reddit.com/r/Jai/comments/1j2idvz/is_odin_kind_of_a_rip_off_of_jai/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Jai/comments/1j2idvz/is_odin_kind_o... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317815

recursivecaveat 3mo ago

I would consider it extremely obscure overall. A large majority of programmers would not be aware of its existence. At the same time there are clearly much less popular languages with articles so it is kindof weird to push to delete. (eg: random scheme implementation w/ no releases in 20 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISC) I would say that wikipedia broadly favors programming languages as far as notability. Like most nerd/geek things their footprint skews toward the internet, and people who enjoy geek stuff are more likely to be wikipedia admins than the general population.

nvme0n1p1 3mo ago
SISC is there because it's not notable, so the busybodies haven't even noticed the page exists. Odin, however, is notable, and that put it on their radar as a target for attacking its notability.
- stymaar 3mo ago
  And here's the persecution LARPing the article talks about.
  - HappyPanacea 3mo ago
    So why is that article not deleted yet?
    - lambdaone 3mo ago
      I see it's been nominated for deletion today. Looking at it, it's been marked for attention for two years, so it's not as if people haven't had time to do anything about it.
woodruffw 3mo ago
This is an argument for deleting those non-notable articles as well, not retaining other non-notable articles.
3mo ago

dismalaf 3mo ago

It's kind of niche but is getting bigger. The Discord server has 10k members, the biggest(?) Twitch programming streamer has been using it recently, JangaFX is big enough to be used by AAA game companies and a few large film studios, and I'm sure there's plenty of users who aren't on the Discord server. If you're comparing it to Rust/C++ you must live in a cave or something. So yes. It's not that big. But it's probably in the top 10 of hyped languages of the current year. There's a bunch of languages from the 60's to 90's on Wikipedia that have probably never had as many users or software shipped as Odin.

steveklabnik 3mo ago

I feel like if you’re into programming languages as a hobby, the chances you know of Odin are pretty high. Not everyone can know everything, of course, but my impression is that it punches above average on notability within the niche.

bobbytheblkbear 3mo ago

[flagged]

jibal 3mo ago

Odin is extremely well known to every human being who keeps up on programming language development, along with Zig, Nim, D, Jai, V, Crystal, Carbon, and others. "programming topics" isn't relevant.

woodruffw 3mo ago
I keep up with PL development, and I am only vaguely aware of Odin (and same for Jai and V). (But this isn’t the point: lots of programmers know about relatively obscure thing, but that does not itself make them notable. Notability is a well-defined property on Wikipedia.)
- jibal 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - woodruffw 3mo ago
    Thank you, that’s very persuasive.
  - jibal 3mo ago
    What should be persuasive is a simple logical inference from the statements made to my conclusion. From the article: > If you are terminally online on programming circles, you most likely have heard of Odin, it's so obvious that I don't feel like I have to make a case at all. It has been covered by the streamer Primeagen and it's used commercially by JangaFX, that's pretty notable to me. If you are active in discussions of other systems programming languages like Zig, Nim, Jai, D, V, Hare, C3, etc. then you have heard of Odin. If someone hasn't heard of all of those languages then it's an objective fact that they don't "keep up with PL development". See for instance https://dev.to/dimension-ai/13-languages-are-challenging-c-most-fail-only-five-stack-up-2no5 https://dev.to/dimension-ai/13-languages-are-challenging-c-m... Deletion of this article is an indication of inadequate processes at Wikipedia for determining the notability of certain sorts of subjects. > Notability is a well-defined property on Wikipedia. This is not true ... if it were then there would not be disputes about notability. And simply reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability makes it clear that it is not "a well-defined property". And beyond that, one of the points being discussed is that Wikipedia's criteria for notability have not adapted to the current state of affairs. If Wikipedia did have a rigid "well-defined property", that would be a mistake. As GingerBill is quoted as saying in TFA: > Odin is now being used by dozens of companies, thousands of public projects, and over a million hobbyists. By a sensible rational evaluation, that makes it notable.

loeg 3mo ago

It's relatively well known? Certainly not mainstream.

krautsauer 3mo ago

It's been here a few times, maybe 4-6 times in the past year?

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

3836293648 3mo ago

I think you just happened to miss it. It's very commonly mentioned in the new systems space, alongside Jonathan Blow's jai.

firesteelrain 3mo ago

I have only heard about it because of HN.

baranul 3mo ago

You never hearing about Odin, is an example of why its article was rejected by Wikipedia, because they failed at providing reputable references. The languages that you likely know of, often are corporate backed, with large marketing budgets and backdoor deals to help saturate traditional and social media. Newer languages, not of corporate origins, usually struggle to achieve public awareness or are purposefully choked out by negative propaganda and negative marketing tactics being unleashed against them. To achieve enough public awareness and momentum, they often need a certain level of luck, where a number of factors fall their way.

klibertp 3mo ago

> I've never heard of it before [...] but I've definitely heard plenty about Rust and c++ topics. Programming is a very broad and deep discipline. If you're a programmer for some time, chances are you know of very niche projects (10 stars on GH) in your domain/stack/platform. It says nothing about your familiarity with much less niche (10k stars on GH) projects outside your domain/stack/etc. The only ways for you to learn about Odin are to be interested in programming languages in general or to be working in the specific niche Odin tries to conquer (+ some luck). In other words, a "normal programmer" not knowing about one of literally hundreds of languages out there is expected, but says little about the notability of said language. > maybe I just happened to miss it? You did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970800 But that's normal - it's impossible to keep track of domains you're not interested in. Programming language development (for languages that don't pay your bills) is not something programmers need to follow. It's a conscious choice to become interested in this very specific, deep, and niche domain. If you were interested in PLs, you'd almost certainly know about Odin - you probably still wouldn't know Odin itself, unless you're specifically interested in "ergonomic, low-level C replacement" languages and, for some reason, concluded that Zig is not for you.