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As anyone here watched the Jonathan Blow videos on his language ideas? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ

As anyone here watched the Jonathan Blow videos on his language ideas? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ I don't care about the specifics of his language but I think he brings up a very valid point which my summary would be, we should design a language that is both performant AND fun to program. Fun = type less boilerplate, make refactoring easier. C++ is not that language and from what I've read Rust is not that language either. C++ is stuck with backward compatibility so it can arguably never achieve those goals. Rust didn't seem to have those goals it mind, it had other goals so it's not really a fun language either. Too verbose or so I've read.

wtetzner 12y ago
How can you say Rust isn't fun to program in if you haven't used it?
- greggman 12y ago
  I can't. But I can make an educated guess that if there are complaints about Rust being too verbose then it's going in the wrong direction from "fun" as defined by the video I linked to.
pcwalton 12y ago
For a browser engine, "memory safe" as a design criterion massively outweighs "fun to program in" (although I do think Rust is pretty fun). Most critical browser engine vulnerabilities are memory safety issues, and we would be not be doing our jobs if we wanted to have "fun" at the expense of security. Jonathan Blow's language is not memory safe, and is not trying to be. That may well be fine for his domain, but not for ours.
- greggman 12y ago
  Like I said, my point is not about the specifics of his language. It's about the ideas he discusses. I agree with him that anytime I'm typing 150 lines of boilerplate on C++ or refactoring things from global function to member function etc, all the busy work required to do that is depressing. I wish more language devs would take stuff like that into account when designing their new language.
steveklabnik 12y ago
They all have been posted to /r/rust. I find it really interesting, but he has very different goals than we do.
pc2g4d 12y ago
It's "fun" to write code that doesn't get pwned... but maybe there is a sweet spot out there of security and fluency?

wtetzner 12y ago

How can you say Rust isn't fun to program in if you haven't used it?

greggman 12y ago
I can't. But I can make an educated guess that if there are complaints about Rust being too verbose then it's going in the wrong direction from "fun" as defined by the video I linked to.

pcwalton 12y ago

For a browser engine, "memory safe" as a design criterion massively outweighs "fun to program in" (although I do think Rust is pretty fun). Most critical browser engine vulnerabilities are memory safety issues, and we would be not be doing our jobs if we wanted to have "fun" at the expense of security. Jonathan Blow's language is not memory safe, and is not trying to be. That may well be fine for his domain, but not for ours.

greggman 12y ago
Like I said, my point is not about the specifics of his language. It's about the ideas he discusses. I agree with him that anytime I'm typing 150 lines of boilerplate on C++ or refactoring things from global function to member function etc, all the busy work required to do that is depressing. I wish more language devs would take stuff like that into account when designing their new language.

steveklabnik 12y ago

They all have been posted to /r/rust. I find it really interesting, but he has very different goals than we do.

pc2g4d 12y ago

It's "fun" to write code that doesn't get pwned... but maybe there is a sweet spot out there of security and fluency?