Ask HN: What's with all the new languages? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#11

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 4:27 PM UTC

nmrm wrote: post #6

Caveat Emptor: All the analysis below pertains mostly to type system features and other "surface observable" aspects of the lanugage. Newly maturing compilation techniques are certainly another reason for the recent explosion (e.g. Rust, Haskell). But I'll stick to what I (ostensibly) know. > I have no particular background in programming languages design and theory Well then, good news: most of these new languages -…

> How do languages get popular?

Inclusive community would be my stab at an answer.

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#12

Post by sillysaurus3 » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 4:27 PM UTC

How is Go or Rust better than C C++

Use C or C++ and then try out Go or Rust.

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#13

Post by rayiner » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 4:37 PM UTC

> When I read about Smalltalk or Lisp or Haskell people regard them as the pinnacle of programming language design and yet their popularity isn't really proportional to those statements.

That's like saying you read about Bob Dylan being the pinnacle of songwriting, but his popularity compared to Beyonce not bearing that out.

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#14

Post by ced » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 4:45 PM UTC

Paul Graham's answer to why some languages become popular: http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#15

Post by pavanky » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 4:54 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

How is Go or Rust better than C C++ Use C or C++ and then try out Go or Rust.

That is not really saying much. Depending on the domain you are in C, C++ can be (and are) much suitable candidates than Go and Rust.

The simple point is the "general purpose programming language" is dead. I am not saying there are no general purpose programming languages. I am saying people are going to use language X for task Y because we have the flexibility to do so now.

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#16

Post by NhanH » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 4:55 PM UTC

Can anyone point me to the story of js? Did it get popular because it was the better language (as it seems to be implied by OP)?

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#17

Post by angersock » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 4:56 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #11

nmrm wrote: post #6

Caveat Emptor: All the analysis below pertains mostly to type system features and other "surface observable" aspects of the lanugage. Newly maturing compilation techniques are certainly another reason for the recent explosion (e.g. Rust, Haskell). But I'll stick to what I (ostensibly) know. > I have no particular background in programming languages design and theory Well then, good news: most of these new languages -…

> How do languages get popular? Inclusive community would be my stab at an answer.

Money, usually. Consider Java, C#, Javascript.

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#18

Post by angersock » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 4:57 PM UTC

nmrm wrote: post #6

Caveat Emptor: All the analysis below pertains mostly to type system features and other "surface observable" aspects of the lanugage. Newly maturing compilation techniques are certainly another reason for the recent explosion (e.g. Rust, Haskell). But I'll stick to what I (ostensibly) know. > I have no particular background in programming languages design and theory Well then, good news: most of these new languages -…

Some great points!

Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any studies/inquiries into the interaction of type systems with languages that favor composition over inheritance? I imagine that a more inheritance-driven language would be more amenable to strong type checking, for example.

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#19

Post by snarfy » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 4:58 PM UTC

It is an error to equate a programming language used for program construction with a (spoken) language used for communication. It is advantageous to have everyone use the same language for communication, but that's not true for construction. Different construction jobs require different tools. This is why there is a tendency for more programming languages, not less. They are tools. Languages for communication are more like protocols, which there is a natural tendency to reduce, just like spoken languages.

Re: Ask HN: What's with all the new languages?

#20

Post by Slackwise » Sun, Jun 15, 2014, 5:01 PM UTC

> How many of them really bring something new to the table, a better way than the old one?

'Better' being subjective, but there are languages, or classes of languages, that bring new paradigms that change the way you approach a problem. Some may work better with the way you mentally model a problem, or they may naturally help with modeling certain problems.

So we've got...

- Imperative sub-procedure languages, like C, Algol, Fortran, etc.

- Object-oriented variants of C, like C++, Java, C#.

- Smalltalk, and Smalltalk OOP based languages like Ruby and Objective-C.

- Forth, a stack-based programming language.

- Tcl, a command-based programming language.

- Unix shells, string-based programming languages.

- Lua/JavaScript, prototypal/hashtable oriented languages.

- Lisp, tree/list-oriented languages.

These are the languages/classes of languages you should study, if you want to see something different. Something that may change the way you think.