Re: niche languages—Hacker News is written in a dialect of Lisp called Arc: - https://github.com/wting/hackernews - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language)
That explains the stable feature set :)
Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
141–150 of 172 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
#142Re: Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
#143Re: Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
#144I did the licensing server for Lunar ( https://lunar.fyi/ ) in Crystal. It’s been a joy to work with it! The standard library for working with strings, JSON, YAML and XML is top notch. Type safe and extremely fast, very important characteristics for a licensing server that is queried hundreds of times a second. I used the super simple Kemal HTTP server library which I like for APIs where most of the logic happens on…
1) Would you consider open sourcing the licensing server in Crystal? 2) What's your revenue with Lunar? :)
Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
#145I did the licensing server for Lunar ( https://lunar.fyi/ ) in Crystal. It’s been a joy to work with it! The standard library for working with strings, JSON, YAML and XML is top notch. Type safe and extremely fast, very important characteristics for a licensing server that is queried hundreds of times a second. I used the super simple Kemal HTTP server library which I like for APIs where most of the logic happens on…
Can I ask 2 questions? 1) Would you consider open sourcing the licensing server in Crystal? 2) What's your revenue with Lunar? :) Thanks!
Last month I’ve also found out about Keygen (https://keygen.sh/) which has a really nice offering, and I would have probably chosen it instead of building my own solution if I’d known about it. I’m concerned about uptime with my own solution, I don’t have the means to provide enough redundancy in case of a network or data center failure.
2. I’m earning about $3.5k per month on Lunar Pro licenses (on average, some months can be 5-6k, some 2k). Doing quality macOS apps is a nice market to be in. You get to do tools for your own usage and also share them with others for some side revenue.
I’ve also created The low-tech guys (https://lowtechguys.com/) and each new app published there is also bringing about $200-$600 per month.
Little by little, I’m hoping to get to a continuous revenue of $8k per month so I can build a home for my family and have more time to pursue my other hobbies (woodworking: https://reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/t1l4rk/_/hyhvjix/?context=...) and (instrumental music: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/Dv8AT2JgNWrzFtLa8)
Re: Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great choice. Pharo deserves more attention for those wanting to do OOP.
I have some idea behind the OOP now and it's insane how everything is an object. I wouldn't call Pharo OOP. I'd call Pharo live OOP. Normally, objects in languages are asleep like a bear in hibernation or something only to wake up when spring arrives (or when you click "compile"). But in Pharo they are awake when you edit them. If I was a DJ/producer, I'd try to see if it makes sense as a music tool.
Re: Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
#147Re: Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
#148I like to code in Haskell because it's beautiful. I have tried coding Haskell in larger projects but that was a bad experience, they were a complicated mess of obscure Haskell extensions and methods with >20 types in their signature. So in my professional life I stick to the pragmatic ugliness of Scala or Java.
As someone who dabbled in Scala in school and a professional Kotlin programmer, hearing someone recommend Scala as a sane alternative makes me fearful of Haskell.
The problem is, you have this language which offers you a million handy little tricks which seem very useful for all kinds of little niche problems. The boring and common sense approach would be not to use them, because it would give your colleagues too many headaches to figure out what they are and why you chose to use them. But in practice the temptation is often too strong.
Re: Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I ask 2 questions? 1) Would you consider open sourcing the licensing server in Crystal? 2) What's your revenue with Lunar? :) Thanks!
1. Yes, I’ve been working on generalizing the Lunar specific code for open sourcing it next month. Still WIP because I’m still getting busy with new monitor edge cases. Last month I’ve also found out about Keygen ( https://keygen.sh/ ) which has a really nice offering, and I would have probably chosen it instead of building my own solution if I’d known about it. I’m concerned about uptime with my own solution, I don’…
I would say 3500 a month is even a median salary for an IT position in WE. From your resume I take it you still work full time? I wonder if that's even worth it at this point unless you make a lot more from your FTE position.
Anyway props!
Re: Ask HN: Why are you programming your hobby projects in a niche language?
#150My hobby project is a niche language.
But are you writing your niche language in a niche language? Or even better, self-hosted in your niche language itself? :) Just curious: what’s your niche language called?
The language is Decl. I think at this point it's more a notation than a language; it relies on a host language for execution. My understanding of what I set out to do has evolved over time, and the past couple of years I've thought of it more as a DSL along the lines of SQL (not in that it's used for database access, for which we already have SQL; I just mean that it's used by embedding it in something else that defines actions).