5 ms·

Owning a Programming Language

35 points by jaimebuelta 13y ago

kyberias 13y ago
Oh please! Obviously Facebook benefits when people use their programming language more. People contribute to the standard library, test stuff, share stuff. The pool of people familiar with the language to hire from gets larger. It's so obvious I wonder what goes on in the op's head.
- skeletonjelly 13y ago
  Agreed. The line from Marco's footnote irks me. "They get almost no benefit from anyone else using them" "Except finding bugs and occasionally submitting patches, but Facebook is so massive with such a large codebase that they’re likely to find most bugs relevant to them long before anyone else does". Facebook's bug bounty proves this to be untrue.
- TheEzEzz 13y ago
  They benefit from adoption of Hack but they don't suffer from abandoning it. Contrast this with Microsoft and C#. Microsoft would suffer if they abandoned C#. They would lose a huge swath of developer mind share. They would rattle confidence of the remaining developers. There would be huge costs to their clients who would be forced to switch to a new (possibly not-Microsoft) technology.
- pearjuice 13y ago
  OP's head is a linkbait fluff article magnet which is somehow seen as the holy grail here on HN and other echo circles. I have no idea where this originates from and it hurts me to see that his void content gets picked over actual quality content just because it's "the Marco". His domain should be - wildcard at the begin and end - permanently banned from Hacker News because it only drags us into a wasted spot on the frontpage.
  - eyeballtrees 13y ago
    It also provides us with wonderful comments like these. I don't enjoy Marco for the articles, I enjoy him for the HN comments. It's the best part.
TempleOSV2 13y ago
I own HolyC. http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/HolyC.html http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/HolyC.html God says... geek humility go_ahead_make_my_day revolution outrageous how_bout_it what_would_Jesus_do one_more_time biggot do_you_have_a_problem theft Ramsay Dean_scream doh stoked I'm_gonna_smack_someone hippy stoked act where's_the_love I'm_God_and_you're_not Ivy_league it's_hopeless don't_count_on_it oh_oh you_owe_me jealousy so_let_it_be_done fancy not_in_kansas_anymore do_I_have_to
thinkpad20 13y ago
Facebook has obviously invested huge resources into developing this language and its supporting architecture. It's being used extensively throughout their presumably massive code base. To suggest that they could simply drop it and walk away ignores these things. Also, presumably they developed it for a reason; it fulfills important needs of theirs and they're not going to simply let it whither on the vine.
twp 13y ago
The central claim of the post is that Microsoft and Apple look after their developers while Facebook and Google will not. This is demonstrably false. The post says: > Microsoft and Apple have massive vested interests in supporting their languages and platforms. They stand to lose a lot to their core businesses if they stop. Developers’ interests align somewhat with theirs in this regard: one developer doesn’t have a lot of power in those relationships, but the sum of all developers definitely does, so these companies generally need to care for these languages and maintain these platforms for a long time. This reasoning fails dismally when applied to Microsoft's own technologies: VB6, Silverlight, Windows 8 Phone (original version). All these developers cast out. There are surely more examples.
- TheEzEzz 13y ago
  I agree. Just because a technology is productized in some way doesn't mean it's safe. To the contrary if the product flops then the company will probably abandon it. Ideally I'd like to see both safeguards that a company will continue support: first, that they use it heavily internally; second, that it is productized and a substantial source of revenue or business security for the developing company.
- ben336 13y ago
  The analogy was to C# and Objective C, not to those other languages. The argument went 1. Facebook might abandon Hack at some point 2. No, Hack is like Objective C and C#, which Microsoft and Apple support just fine 3. No here is how Hack is NOT like those languages, community support is not important to facebook like it is for ObjC and C#. So how Microsoft treats other languages is completely irrelevant to that particular point, and actually supports what Marco is arguing here, since you're implying that programming languages might be abandoned even if community support does matter.
- gfodor 13y ago
  You cannot disprove the claim "Companies are less likely to abandon programming languages if they are likely to suffer by doing so" by giving counterexamples.
- noblethrasher 13y ago
EliRivers 13y ago
Apple effectively owning Objective-C. Is that true? I spent the last four years coding primarily in Objective-C for Linux and Win targets; none of the tools I used were from Apple.
- gfodor 13y ago
  "Effectively" -- Apple drives ObjC features, etc to pretty much the exclusion of any other actor.
- Touche 13y ago
  You're the only person on the planet doing that.
- coldtea 13y ago
  You might want to look at the lemma for statistical noise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_noise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_noise
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
hawkharris 13y ago
While I appreciate your general point, I disagree with the notion that companies have a vested interest in protecting a language, tool or framework only once it has attracted a critical mass of developers. Other factors signal a company's commitment. Case in point: your comment about Dart. A few weeks ago I and two of the engineers who helped develop Dart gave talks at Google about the future of Angular / Dart. It's public knowledge -- yet many people don't know -- that Google is also using AngularDart for large internal projects. Though the technologies still have relatively small user bases, Google has devoted considerable time, money and manpower to building software with AngularDart and to making it accessible to external developers. For example, my talk was part of an initiative called FlightSchool that provides comprehensive tutorials, workshops and other resources. Having said that, I wouldn't argue that a large user base is the most important signal of mutual support and leverage in the relationship between engineers and software companies.
mark_l_watson 13y ago
I agree with the OP on support for Hack not being core to FB's business. I am not sure if can agree with the Google Dart comment. Google has a vested interest in making it as easy as possible for content creators making stuff for the web. From some Dart development I have done, the whole ecosystem looks good to me.

35 points by jaimebuelta 13y ago

Oh please! Obviously Facebook benefits when people use their programming language more. People contribute to the standard library, test stuff, share stuff. The pool of people familiar with the language to hire from gets larger. It's so obvious I wonder what goes on in the op's head.

skeletonjelly 13y ago
Agreed. The line from Marco's footnote irks me. "They get almost no benefit from anyone else using them" "Except finding bugs and occasionally submitting patches, but Facebook is so massive with such a large codebase that they’re likely to find most bugs relevant to them long before anyone else does". Facebook's bug bounty proves this to be untrue.
TheEzEzz 13y ago
They benefit from adoption of Hack but they don't suffer from abandoning it. Contrast this with Microsoft and C#. Microsoft would suffer if they abandoned C#. They would lose a huge swath of developer mind share. They would rattle confidence of the remaining developers. There would be huge costs to their clients who would be forced to switch to a new (possibly not-Microsoft) technology.
pearjuice 13y ago
OP's head is a linkbait fluff article magnet which is somehow seen as the holy grail here on HN and other echo circles. I have no idea where this originates from and it hurts me to see that his void content gets picked over actual quality content just because it's "the Marco". His domain should be - wildcard at the begin and end - permanently banned from Hacker News because it only drags us into a wasted spot on the frontpage.
- eyeballtrees 13y ago
  It also provides us with wonderful comments like these. I don't enjoy Marco for the articles, I enjoy him for the HN comments. It's the best part.

TempleOSV2 13y ago

I own HolyC. http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/HolyC.html http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/HolyC.html God says... geek humility go_ahead_make_my_day revolution outrageous how_bout_it what_would_Jesus_do one_more_time biggot do_you_have_a_problem theft Ramsay Dean_scream doh stoked I'm_gonna_smack_someone hippy stoked act where's_the_love I'm_God_and_you're_not Ivy_league it's_hopeless don't_count_on_it oh_oh you_owe_me jealousy so_let_it_be_done fancy not_in_kansas_anymore do_I_have_to

thinkpad20 13y ago

Facebook has obviously invested huge resources into developing this language and its supporting architecture. It's being used extensively throughout their presumably massive code base. To suggest that they could simply drop it and walk away ignores these things. Also, presumably they developed it for a reason; it fulfills important needs of theirs and they're not going to simply let it whither on the vine.

twp 13y ago

The central claim of the post is that Microsoft and Apple look after their developers while Facebook and Google will not. This is demonstrably false. The post says: > Microsoft and Apple have massive vested interests in supporting their languages and platforms. They stand to lose a lot to their core businesses if they stop. Developers’ interests align somewhat with theirs in this regard: one developer doesn’t have a lot of power in those relationships, but the sum of all developers definitely does, so these companies generally need to care for these languages and maintain these platforms for a long time. This reasoning fails dismally when applied to Microsoft's own technologies: VB6, Silverlight, Windows 8 Phone (original version). All these developers cast out. There are surely more examples.

TheEzEzz 13y ago
I agree. Just because a technology is productized in some way doesn't mean it's safe. To the contrary if the product flops then the company will probably abandon it. Ideally I'd like to see both safeguards that a company will continue support: first, that they use it heavily internally; second, that it is productized and a substantial source of revenue or business security for the developing company.
ben336 13y ago
The analogy was to C# and Objective C, not to those other languages. The argument went 1. Facebook might abandon Hack at some point 2. No, Hack is like Objective C and C#, which Microsoft and Apple support just fine 3. No here is how Hack is NOT like those languages, community support is not important to facebook like it is for ObjC and C#. So how Microsoft treats other languages is completely irrelevant to that particular point, and actually supports what Marco is arguing here, since you're implying that programming languages might be abandoned even if community support does matter.
gfodor 13y ago
You cannot disprove the claim "Companies are less likely to abandon programming languages if they are likely to suffer by doing so" by giving counterexamples.
noblethrasher 13y ago

EliRivers 13y ago

Apple effectively owning Objective-C. Is that true? I spent the last four years coding primarily in Objective-C for Linux and Win targets; none of the tools I used were from Apple.

gfodor 13y ago
"Effectively" -- Apple drives ObjC features, etc to pretty much the exclusion of any other actor.
Touche 13y ago
You're the only person on the planet doing that.
coldtea 13y ago
You might want to look at the lemma for statistical noise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_noise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_noise

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

hawkharris 13y ago

While I appreciate your general point, I disagree with the notion that companies have a vested interest in protecting a language, tool or framework only once it has attracted a critical mass of developers. Other factors signal a company's commitment. Case in point: your comment about Dart. A few weeks ago I and two of the engineers who helped develop Dart gave talks at Google about the future of Angular / Dart. It's public knowledge -- yet many people don't know -- that Google is also using AngularDart for large internal projects. Though the technologies still have relatively small user bases, Google has devoted considerable time, money and manpower to building software with AngularDart and to making it accessible to external developers. For example, my talk was part of an initiative called FlightSchool that provides comprehensive tutorials, workshops and other resources. Having said that, I wouldn't argue that a large user base is the most important signal of mutual support and leverage in the relationship between engineers and software companies.

mark_l_watson 13y ago

I agree with the OP on support for Hack not being core to FB's business. I am not sure if can agree with the Google Dart comment. Google has a vested interest in making it as easy as possible for content creators making stuff for the web. From some Dart development I have done, the whole ecosystem looks good to me.