5 ms·

A lot of times people like the idea of a thing more than the thing. Meanwhile, a lot a people hate on C++, which they're only able to do because they learned i

A lot of times people like the idea of a thing more than the thing. Meanwhile, a lot a people hate on C++, which they're only able to do because they learned its nuanced spec, which they only did because it had already reached critical mass in the wild, because it worked everywhere and was, despite the complaints, comprehensible, if hard to get perfect in the language-lawyer way.

jonahx 12y ago
This argument reduces to saying that anything popular and widely used is actually better than anything unpopular but beloved by language enthusiasts. This simply isn't the case. Many, many factors beyond merit contribute to language popularity and usage.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  You have to have a metric for 'better'. If its 'utility' then yes something popular is better than something unused.
  - Chinjut 12y ago
    Even "utility" isn't necessarily identical with "popularity". I suspect, in many cases, by "X is better than Y", people mean enthymematically "X would be better than Y if we were to start using X instead of Y, even taking transition costs into account"; it would be the death of progress to dismiss out of hand every argument of this kind.
  - drivingmenuts 12y ago
    Thus my motto for PHP: It's better than nothing at all. Usually ... FML.
    - ww520 12y ago
      Despite its warts PHP does have very valid merits that make it popular.
  - jonahx 12y ago
    You're either saying something that is tautologically true (more popular things have more "utility" because they're used more because they're more popular), or is clearly false by any metric that a majority of experts in CS or language design, or even industry professionals, would agree on.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      How about "Sum ( usefulness for a purpose X number of instances its used for that purpose )"? Plenty of people would agree with that definition of utility. Something that isn't used at all (or much) has very low utility.
- deeviant 12y ago
  Even though the basis of your statement, "Many, many factors beyond merit contribute to language popularity and usage," is true, actually defining the merits of these lesser used languages seems to be something that their fervent supporters are poor at. To my (C-tainted ears), the affirmations of support generally tend to sound something like, "It's better because its (modern|buzzword|safer|buzzward|technobabble|compact)." I am not suggesting that these languages do not have tangible benefits, but I do wish their supportors would be a bit more concrete while describing them.
- stormbrew 12y ago
  I consider myself a language enthusiast, but I think that 'merit' in PL design is extremely poorly understood on a practical level. This idea that these languages became popular in spite of their apparent lack of merit is far too easy a way to stop thinking about what merits they might have that the oft-touted 'better languages' lack that drive people to use them. And this thought-stopper has to rest on an assumption that programmers don't want things to be easier/better/etc., which strikes me as unlikely.
Chinjut 12y ago
A lot of people also spent a lot of time hating on Windows, which they only were so familiar with because it had already reached such overwhelming "critical mass in the wild". Does it follow that all these complaints were ultimately misguided? (I don't have any particularly strong opinions on Windows myself; it just seemed an apropos example for the Hacker News crowd. There are a million other examples of the same type, of course.)
- xorcist 12y ago
  I think the point is that the complaints may all very well be valid, but that there is also the question what they did right. And Windows do get some important things (mostly) right, for example backwards compatibility.
andywood 12y ago
Now, as a follow-up: is anything holding back Rust?
- lmm 12y ago
  Anyone who understands Rust's good points (and there are many) is probably already using Haskell. What compelling advantage does Rust have over Haskell to justify the cost of switching (and, more importantly, the cost of losing higher-kinded types, and of adding macros)? Manual memory management is unlikely to be enough.
  - andywood 12y ago
    I see. I was thinking generally about tools / libs / ecosystem, and platform presence. I actually didn't realize Haskell was already so established.
    - aaron-lebo 12y ago
      It is established among a very competent, smart, and vocal community. It is not established as a language heavily used in industry or most open source projects by any means.
    - lmm 12y ago
      I meant less that lots of people use Haskell and more that most C++ folks aren't interested in changing languages.
  - aaron-lebo 12y ago
    There's a ton of people who aren't using Haskell and never will. It is a great language, but it isn't a language that will ever be really popular. Rust bridges the gap between industry C++ programmers with the ideas of Haskell. Sure you might not see a lot of codebases migrated from Haskell to Rust (not that there are a massive amount of anyway), but you will likely see C++ codebases migrated over to it, and Haskell programmers that want their library to be widely used may start greenfied projects in Rust instead of Haskell. You are looking at it from a Haskell -> Rust conversion cycle, when that isn't really important from either a numbers standpoint or how Rust is positioning itself.

jonahx 12y ago

This argument reduces to saying that anything popular and widely used is actually better than anything unpopular but beloved by language enthusiasts. This simply isn't the case. Many, many factors beyond merit contribute to language popularity and usage.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
You have to have a metric for 'better'. If its 'utility' then yes something popular is better than something unused.
- Chinjut 12y ago
  Even "utility" isn't necessarily identical with "popularity". I suspect, in many cases, by "X is better than Y", people mean enthymematically "X would be better than Y if we were to start using X instead of Y, even taking transition costs into account"; it would be the death of progress to dismiss out of hand every argument of this kind.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  Thus my motto for PHP: It's better than nothing at all. Usually ... FML.
  - ww520 12y ago
    Despite its warts PHP does have very valid merits that make it popular.
- jonahx 12y ago
  You're either saying something that is tautologically true (more popular things have more "utility" because they're used more because they're more popular), or is clearly false by any metric that a majority of experts in CS or language design, or even industry professionals, would agree on.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    How about "Sum ( usefulness for a purpose X number of instances its used for that purpose )"? Plenty of people would agree with that definition of utility. Something that isn't used at all (or much) has very low utility.
deeviant 12y ago
Even though the basis of your statement, "Many, many factors beyond merit contribute to language popularity and usage," is true, actually defining the merits of these lesser used languages seems to be something that their fervent supporters are poor at. To my (C-tainted ears), the affirmations of support generally tend to sound something like, "It's better because its (modern|buzzword|safer|buzzward|technobabble|compact)." I am not suggesting that these languages do not have tangible benefits, but I do wish their supportors would be a bit more concrete while describing them.
stormbrew 12y ago
I consider myself a language enthusiast, but I think that 'merit' in PL design is extremely poorly understood on a practical level. This idea that these languages became popular in spite of their apparent lack of merit is far too easy a way to stop thinking about what merits they might have that the oft-touted 'better languages' lack that drive people to use them. And this thought-stopper has to rest on an assumption that programmers don't want things to be easier/better/etc., which strikes me as unlikely.

Chinjut 12y ago

A lot of people also spent a lot of time hating on Windows, which they only were so familiar with because it had already reached such overwhelming "critical mass in the wild". Does it follow that all these complaints were ultimately misguided? (I don't have any particularly strong opinions on Windows myself; it just seemed an apropos example for the Hacker News crowd. There are a million other examples of the same type, of course.)

xorcist 12y ago
I think the point is that the complaints may all very well be valid, but that there is also the question what they did right. And Windows do get some important things (mostly) right, for example backwards compatibility.

andywood 12y ago

Now, as a follow-up: is anything holding back Rust?

lmm 12y ago
Anyone who understands Rust's good points (and there are many) is probably already using Haskell. What compelling advantage does Rust have over Haskell to justify the cost of switching (and, more importantly, the cost of losing higher-kinded types, and of adding macros)? Manual memory management is unlikely to be enough.
- andywood 12y ago
  I see. I was thinking generally about tools / libs / ecosystem, and platform presence. I actually didn't realize Haskell was already so established.
  - aaron-lebo 12y ago
    It is established among a very competent, smart, and vocal community. It is not established as a language heavily used in industry or most open source projects by any means.
  - lmm 12y ago
    I meant less that lots of people use Haskell and more that most C++ folks aren't interested in changing languages.
- aaron-lebo 12y ago
  There's a ton of people who aren't using Haskell and never will. It is a great language, but it isn't a language that will ever be really popular. Rust bridges the gap between industry C++ programmers with the ideas of Haskell. Sure you might not see a lot of codebases migrated from Haskell to Rust (not that there are a massive amount of anyway), but you will likely see C++ codebases migrated over to it, and Haskell programmers that want their library to be widely used may start greenfied projects in Rust instead of Haskell. You are looking at it from a Haskell -> Rust conversion cycle, when that isn't really important from either a numbers standpoint or how Rust is positioning itself.