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> So what is really needed is a startup culture that provides for years of uninterrupted development and focus. Not just startups, but any worthwhile project r
by vorg 13y ago
> So what is really needed is a startup culture that provides for years of uninterrupted development and focus.
Not just startups, but any worthwhile project really. From an interview with Rich Hickey:
"I started [Clojure] while on a sabbatical I had given myself. Not a break from work, but a break to work, as a completely free person. I gave myself leave to do whatever I thought was right, with no regard for what others might think, nor any motivation to profit. In releasing it, I had the normal expectations for a new language—that ten to a hundred people might use it. Maybe I would get some help or code contributions. It has taken off, and subsequently demanded far more time than the sabbatical I planned. So, I’m trying to recoup some of the investment I’ve made. Had it been a financially motivated undertaking, I’m sure Clojure would not exist, but I don’t regret having invested in it."
http://codequarterly.com/2011/rich-hickey/ http://codequarterly.com/2011/rich-hickey/
- oeqa 13y agoThat's an interesting link. I always assumed that Rich Hickey came from academia, given that he made a successful programming language. Are there any biographical articles talking about his background?
- silverlake 13y agoHe was a consultant. FYI: It's extremely rare for anyone from academia to make a commercially successful language. Their incentives are different. They want publishable novelty, and they don't care about building a useful suite of libraries and a vibrant community. Jones (Haskell), Syme (F#), and Odersky (Scala) are the only designers w/ academic backgrounds I can think of for marginally popular languages.
- judk 13y agoAnd note that among the major reasons that Haskell didn't get widely popular is that it is full of publishable novelty and lacked a useful suite of libraries* and vibrant community. Until the past few years when Galois folks and bos did a lot of library work.
- kens 13y agoAlso Ousterhout with Tcl/TK. Interestingly, he was an OS researcher not a language academic, and he made the language to solve problems he had, not to be academically interesting.
- oeqa 13y agoAcademia might have been the wrong word. Do you know of any other language designer (except Larry Wall) who doesn't have a PhD? Btw, what's the source of that consultant bit?
- oeqa 13y agoAnd before you say "Simon Peyton Jones!", you should know that he got a PhD four days ago – http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~muffy/SPJ_oration.pdf http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~muffy/SPJ_oration.pdf
- silverlake 13y agoC#, Python, PHP, Javascript, Perl, and Ruby. Obj-C, because the guy had a doctorate in biology. They are all very smart people. As the other comments said, Tcl and Lua are designed by phd guys. As were C++, Java and Erlang. I guess we've got a pretty good track record. I should use my phd in programming languages to do something useful. ;-) maybe later.
- sn41 13y agoRobin Milner of ML is the most prominent example I know. One of the two Turing award winners without a Ph. D (the other being Floyd.) He introduced polymorphic type inference to a full-blown programming language - this is the most jaw-dropping language feature I have seen to date: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Milner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Milner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_inference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_inference
- frabcus 13y agoLua was made by three academics at a university in Brazil. I consider it more than marginally popular (particular in computer games).