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Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

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Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#51
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past decade, I watched HN's and Reddit's hype waves cycle through server-side JavaScript, Golang, Haskell, and now Rust. With plenty of secondary favorites in the mix like Julia, Nim, Zig, etc. A lot of these things do find some modest niche to survive in. But none really take over the world as originally forecast by the hype wave. Ultimately, you either enjoy tinkering with programming languages for persona…

I’ve also observed these waves, but never about a language that you can’t actually go pick up a compiler or interpreter for. Jai is unique in that sense. Who’s actually getting into these closed betas?

People that have an interesting projects for stress testing the langage.

Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#52
I wrote an extremely hard and complex program in which I had to use c++ metaprogramming throughout. Not my decision. I do not understand why you could possibly need more metaprogramming than C++ provides. This is a problematic feature to begin with. Not worthless but not worth much. The debugging was difficult. Many problems show up buried in literally thousands of compiler error messages.

Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#53
post #50

This person might as well said that he is not planning to finish his game. Screwing around with tooling and languages seems to be a common pitfall to not finishing a game. Why not just use the best ecosystem like Unreal/Unity and get the game out of the door fast?

> And the most important reason: I just feel like it!

Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#54
post #6

I'm really interested to see Jai in the wild, but I have to say I find the Jai v.s. Rust comparison here...unconvincing to say to least. It's particularly funny to be excited about "being able to do anything during compilation" using Jai and then complain to that the #1 problem in programming is "culturally tolerated and even encouraged complexity."

Complexity often arises from restrictions on "anything", rather than people actually doing anything.

Excellent point!

Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#55
post #8

I don’t understand how this language is planning on ever seeing adoption when it’s been restricted from open use since it’s inception. Seems like vaporware.

Over the past decade, I watched HN's and Reddit's hype waves cycle through server-side JavaScript, Golang, Haskell, and now Rust. With plenty of secondary favorites in the mix like Julia, Nim, Zig, etc. A lot of these things do find some modest niche to survive in. But none really take over the world as originally forecast by the hype wave. Ultimately, you either enjoy tinkering with programming languages for persona…

Javascript absolutely took its position. Speaking of those waves, where did Ruby and RoR go? Seems completely dead on HN whereas 'back in the day' it was top most talked thing. LISP would be a guest of honor - always there, never here.

Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#56
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past decade, I watched HN's and Reddit's hype waves cycle through server-side JavaScript, Golang, Haskell, and now Rust. With plenty of secondary favorites in the mix like Julia, Nim, Zig, etc. A lot of these things do find some modest niche to survive in. But none really take over the world as originally forecast by the hype wave. Ultimately, you either enjoy tinkering with programming languages for persona…

I'm starting to actually believe that Rust will eat C's lunch for systems programming.

The disparity between Rust jobs and C/C++/C#/Java/Golang jobs on Indeed is staggering. Even worse, most of the Rust jobs are blockchain-related and may not survive the coming blockchain downturn.

It may be the case that some people use Rust but without Rust jobs, there will be no pool of experienced developers to later draw on.

Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#57
post #50

This person might as well said that he is not planning to finish his game. Screwing around with tooling and languages seems to be a common pitfall to not finishing a game. Why not just use the best ecosystem like Unreal/Unity and get the game out of the door fast?

> Why not just use the best ecosystem like Unreal/Unity

laughable. absolutely laughable.

I'm not even talking about politics of using an engine versus writing one; unity and unreal are complex tools with their own problems. if you value what you are producing, and if you value quality and you want your game to be just the way you want it, Unity and Unreal will fight you just as hard as D or C++ have been for the blog author.

Unity/Unreal are also simply not capable of a lot of things. They are definitely not a pure win for someone making a game.

Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#58
post #50

This person might as well said that he is not planning to finish his game. Screwing around with tooling and languages seems to be a common pitfall to not finishing a game. Why not just use the best ecosystem like Unreal/Unity and get the game out of the door fast?

> get the game out of the door fast

But at what cost? Using Unity/Unreal incur the cost of lower flexibility in your design, more time spent learning "the unreal way"/"the unity way", and a finished product that looks and feels like every other unity/unreal game.

Of course the argument for unity/unreal is also true: Building your own game engine takes lots and lots of time.

So it's a tradeoff, like all things.

Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#59
post #8

I don’t understand how this language is planning on ever seeing adoption when it’s been restricted from open use since it’s inception. Seems like vaporware.

I think Jonathan Blow's main goal is to make his dream game programming language so that he can be happier while developing all of his future games. Widespread adoption by others is only a secondary concern. He also doesn't want to push it out to the general public until he feels it's ready, and wants to take the time to get it right first.

Jonathan Blow is a skilled craftsman with stuff like this and he knows he's going to get a bunch of Opinions About His Language from people who think they have a complete superset of his knowlege, and he is making his language without involving those people in any way.

Re: Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai

#60
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Supports x86 architecture only No native macOS then? > No virtual functions > Jai is less dogmatic okay

> No native macOS then? Or Pi, or iOS, or practically all Android hardware… Kind of a non-starter IMO. Maybe this was marginally acceptable when the language started in '14 but it becomes less so every year.

well, given that any random person can't just adopt the language today, the platform support available today doesn't really matter, does it?

Jon is writing it for his needs, and this thread is full of people saying "it doesn't meet my needs!" So what? it's not for you!

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