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The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#41

Post by jcelerier »

digitalzombie wrote: post #32

I disagree. They can do whatever they want because it's passion driven. If people finds the new language wonderful they'll choose to spend their time there and to create their own community around it. It's their free time and they have every right to choose how to spend it. Also with RPC, the apache project arrow, etc... there'll always be people out there will bridge community. Also is this really a problem? Program…

> I've seen front end javascript frameworks fragmentation everywhere and they're fine with it

just because they're fine with it does not mean that everyone is fine with it

Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#42

Post by nineteen999 »

reacweb wrote: post #39
nineteen999 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how old that article is, but parts of gcc suite have been rewritten in a subset of C++ for several years now ( https://lwn.net/Articles/542457/ ), starting from over 10 years ago.

Yes, I know that. C++ is also very much used for game development. C++ allows to build very impressive abstractions that are very handy. The main drawback is that this flexibility has a huge impact on the language. When you switch between two projects writen in C++, it is almost as if they were using a different language. I have understood that this language was a mess in 98 when I have bought the standard and read i…

My own experience with C++ is mainly limited to game development since the base classes in UE4 are written in and can be extended with C++ (as is most of the engine itself).

Unreal has a crazy bolted on reflection system implemented with its own pre-processor to work around the lack of reflection in C++. Otherwise C++ makes sense there I think because (a) performance is extremely good which is important for games, 3D games in particular; and (b) games are the type of program which can often benefit from OO design and inheritance.

I'm a long time C casual who only recently made the leap to C++, but I know what you mean when you say two C++ codebases can have vastly different styles. Of course that is true of many languages but it does appear to be amplified with C++.

Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#43

Post by madmaniak »

ttty wrote: post #30
fouc wrote: post #25

How about the reverse problem? The cost of mindshare. Everyone grouping up on a major programming language or framework. It's a bit irritating when people often choose their language or framework because of the size of the community rather than actually evaluating alternative languages or frameworks first. Take React for example. There are some great alternatives to it, especially inspired by react but simpler & clea…

I used react for 4 years. I don't see the point in using something that is 10% different. Then you need to hire engineers, most of them know more react than an obscure library. React has lower chance to be discontinued. React works well. I rather focus on building new products than changing tech. Of course during the jQuery time I hated it all the time and I was looking for alternatives, but react is exactly how I th…

Using React you just have no idea what efficiency is.

Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#44

Post by pron »

burntsushi wrote: post #16

I also disagree with the premise of this article, and I do not think the argument presented here is compelling at all. The motivations that spur people to do work are complex and diverse, and this article seems to pretend otherwise. For example: > but it's common for new languages to trigger reimplementation of, e.g., container data structures, HTTP clients, and random number generators. If the new language did not e…

There are a couple of problems with your perspective:

1. Even if re-implementation of libraries in new languages were free due to an excitement factor, real software is not built this way. New languages become old, and software needs maintenance. So what you get for free (supposing you're right) is not worth very much and not what counts, anyway. Most of the cost and value is in prolonged maintenance, which has to be done for multiple implementations in parallel.

2. It's reasonable to assume that work is never really free. But if we're hypothesizing about alternate realities, you may as well imagine that instead of new languages something else is invented to motivate you to do free work.

Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#45

Post by vidarh »

DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #2

That reflects rather well how I feel about the recent DSL craze, specially in the ruby community. It's also how I feel about libraries and frameworks. Programming languages probably suffer the least from this phenomenon due to how difficult it is to create a complete language, with compilers and all. In contrast, languages that just extend others often do benefit from existing communities. Take moonscript¹ for exampl…

Most of "the DSL craze" in Ruby is just defining methods. It's rarely new languages, but simply a matter of taking full advantage of the language to let you talk about your domain in a more natural way. It's not so much a "dsl craze" in Ruby as writing idiomatic Ruby well, the same was as e.g. Smalltalk or lisps also tend to make you create your own vocabulary that is close to indistinguishable (more so than in Ruby, in fact, where the block syntax and control structure syntax differ) from the language itself.

Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#46

Post by delhanty »

jacquesm wrote: post #4
michaelmrose wrote: post #3

"However, I hope people consider carefully the social costs of creating a new programming language especially if it becomes popular, and understand that in some cases creating a popular new language could actually be irresponsible." Passion isn't fungible and there is zero gauruntee that the person who creates an interesting new language wouldn't have chosen to binge watch Netflix instead. Furthermore without a cryst…

> it's difficult to separate ahead of time which efforts will move us forward in some small or large ways. That's the point: most efforts do not move us forward but instead move us backwards because fewer people are working on the things that matter. It's a solid argument and it applies to far more of the open source community than just to programming languages, in fact programming languages are the smaller part of t…

>it means that once your programming language gains adoption beyond some people playing around with it you can't just walk off and say that it isn't your problem

Assuming that you don't work for them and that you don't have a contract for support with them, then why can't you just walk away?

In fact I'd go further: it would be healthy if people that needed support for open-source got used to the idea of paying for it.

Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#47

Post by jacquesm »

delhanty wrote: post #46
jacquesm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's difficult to separate ahead of time which efforts will move us forward in some small or large ways. That's the point: most efforts do not move us forward but instead move us backwards because fewer people are working on the things that matter. It's a solid argument and it applies to far more of the open source community than just to programming languages, in fact programming languages are the smaller part of t…

>it means that once your programming language gains adoption beyond some people playing around with it you can't just walk off and say that it isn't your problem Assuming that you don't work for them and that you don't have a contract for support with them, then why can't you just walk away? In fact I'd go further: it would be healthy if people that needed support for open-source got used to the idea of paying for it…

> Assuming that you don't work for them and that you don't have a contract for support with them, then why can't you just walk away?

The ability to do something does not always correlate with morality.

Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#48

Post by ttty »

madmaniak wrote: post #43
ttty wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used react for 4 years. I don't see the point in using something that is 10% different. Then you need to hire engineers, most of them know more react than an obscure library. React has lower chance to be discontinued. React works well. I rather focus on building new products than changing tech. Of course during the jQuery time I hated it all the time and I was looking for alternatives, but react is exactly how I th…

Using React you just have no idea what efficiency is.

Can you further explain what you mean?

Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#49

Post by gameswithgo »

digitalzombie wrote: post #32

I disagree. They can do whatever they want because it's passion driven. If people finds the new language wonderful they'll choose to spend their time there and to create their own community around it. It's their free time and they have every right to choose how to spend it. Also with RPC, the apache project arrow, etc... there'll always be people out there will bridge community. Also is this really a problem? Program…

you are not disagreeing with the article.

Re: The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation

#50

Post by fauigerzigerk »

Isn't this a pretty trivial case of exploration vs exploitation? Clearly we need both.

The more interesting question for me is why we still don't have a widely adopted approach to sharing libraries across languages.

The most promising approach I have seen in recent decades was Microsoft's COM. But it has declined along with Microsoft's clout.

Unfortunately, current industry leaders don't seem to be interested in this problem at all.

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