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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

#111

Post by cyber_kinetist »

henry_viii wrote: post #98
stephc_int13 wrote: post #17

I'd love to see more about Jai. I don't understand why they are not working in the open, this is a tool, not a game, input for a large community is extremely valuable. But as brilliant as Jon Blow is, he is at least equally as stubborn. Fast compilation and nice, easy to read syntax with good default is exactly what I am looking for. I can understand the hype about metaprogramming, and its potential usefulness, but I…

I'm surprised the author didn't mention the Lobster programming language when evaluating a successor language: https://github.com/aardappel/lobster The language seems to be exactly what he was looking for - a high-performance high-level language specifically designed for video games.

From a glance at the language description, this is very different from what he is looking from Jai. I don't see any description of it having metaprogramming facilities as good as D or Jai (or even C++!).

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

#112

Post by hsn915 »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #47
3a2d29 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to find any material on Jai. It seems to be a “better C”. Isn’t that what D / Zig try to do? What’s the advantage?

I think that Jai / Zig / Odin all started around the same time. D is closer to C++ than C, in my opinion. I suspect that Jai was an inspiration for Zig and Odin. Many developers in gamedev circles are still using C or orthodox C++ (C++ without most of the bullshit) but are frustrated by many features and gaps. Short compilation time is one of the big goals, as it is crucial for fast iteration. The goal is simply to h…

If you can find very old Jai videos on YouTube, you can find the creator of Odin was one of the early people excited about the project.

I suppose if the development of Jai was made more in the open/public, Odin would probably not have existed.

That said, I'm glad Odin exists.

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

#113

Post by cyber_kinetist »

googlryas wrote: post #78
stephc_int13 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, of course he can do whatever he wants. The think is that quite a few people have been convinced by his talks and want to use Jai for real projects.

If there's enough actual interest, some group of people will just clone the language in an open manner since enough is known about it. But that doesn't seem to be happening at the moment.

I thought Odin was one of the clone languages at the start (although later it diverged from Jai in many aspects, and is far ahead Jai in the aspect that it's open-source and is actually being used in production).

But really I would like Jai to take some time to mature over the years, instead of rushing out for an immediate public release. It has some very ambitious ideas that would absolutely be killer features, but I think it needs ample time to get polished. (Off to writing C++ code during the time then...)

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

#114

Post by typon »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #91
StevePerkins wrote: post #20

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 don’t think Go was ever especially over-hyped, and it has been pretty wildly successful in its “niche” (server side programming, CLI tools, daemons, etc). There was some controversy because someone said it was for “systems programming” by which the author seems to have meant “distributed/networked systems” rather than “operating systems” or whatever most people mean when they use the (very imprecise) term “systems…

"virtually the entire container ecosystem"

An entire area of software that is completely unnecessary, but because the gods at Google gifted it to us, people have to pretend it's amazing

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

#115

Post by vinyl7 »

unwind wrote: post #89

As someone who is aware of jai but not at all following the development, do the terms of the closed beta the OP is in permit code to be shown? I guess "yes", it seems so pointless otherwise. Would be very interesting to see e.g. "here is how this (gnarly) C++ turned into beatiful jai", zoomed-in to actual code level.

Yea, theres no NDA aside from not distributing the compiler. Theres a bunch of code on github, though it can be hard to find

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

#116

Post by kjksf »

3a2d29 wrote: post #39
stephc_int13 wrote: post #17

I'd love to see more about Jai. I don't understand why they are not working in the open, this is a tool, not a game, input for a large community is extremely valuable. But as brilliant as Jon Blow is, he is at least equally as stubborn. Fast compilation and nice, easy to read syntax with good default is exactly what I am looking for. I can understand the hype about metaprogramming, and its potential usefulness, but I…

It’s hard to find any material on Jai. It seems to be a “better C”. Isn’t that what D / Zig try to do? What’s the advantage?

There's quite a lot of information, just not very accessible.

https://www.twitch.tv/j_blow/videos?filter=archives&sort=tim... : this is jai's author livestreaming language development, most up-to-date

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmV5I2fxaiCKfxMBrNsU1... : a cureated subset of twitch videos, possibly outdated info

https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md : a summary of jai based on the above curated videos, possibly outdated

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

#117

Post by cyber_kinetist »

klodolph wrote: post #105
cyber_kinetist wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his disdain towards academia isn't really anti-intellectualism (he's not ignorant of compiler theory knowledge, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to write a compiler from scratch in the first place! And his interest in programming languages seems to span decades, from what I remember from one of his streams). I think he's critical of the fact that the primary focus of academia and industry in computer scie…

I’d have to say that academic research into programming languages has provided immense benefits for actual programmers over the years, it just has such a long lead time that people forget that the research came out of academia in the first place. People also don’t really understand the process of how these ideas come from academia into mainstream programming languages. It only seems like academic research has diverge…

That's a fair point. Maybe researchers needed to delve into all sorts of weird parser theories, to later figure out that they weren't that needed. Practicioneers mainly know the final result, but aren't usually interested in the full history of how people got to that conclusion.

But I think during the recent decades, there has been a consensus that perverse incentives in academia are degrading research quality and preventing papers from becoming actually usable in real-life applications (mainly with the focus of paper metrics and the constant need to apply for grants). So although I think academia is still important long-term, I understand why some people would think it's becoming less useful.

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

#118

Post by unwind »

vinyl7 wrote: post #115
unwind wrote: post #89

As someone who is aware of jai but not at all following the development, do the terms of the closed beta the OP is in permit code to be shown? I guess "yes", it seems so pointless otherwise. Would be very interesting to see e.g. "here is how this (gnarly) C++ turned into beatiful jai", zoomed-in to actual code level.

Yea, theres no NDA aside from not distributing the compiler. Theres a bunch of code on github, though it can be hard to find

Okay, great. That totally makes sense, but on the other hand Mr Blow seems to have some rather unusual ideas regarding how to develop this new language (and is a game developer, which sometimes brings its own set of secrecy-first ideas [1]).

[1]: For reasons, of course. Been there.

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

#119

Post by oxryly1 »

3a2d29 wrote: post #61
stephc_int13 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Jai / Zig / Odin all started around the same time. D is closer to C++ than C, in my opinion. I suspect that Jai was an inspiration for Zig and Odin. Many developers in gamedev circles are still using C or orthodox C++ (C++ without most of the bullshit) but are frustrated by many features and gaps. Short compilation time is one of the big goals, as it is crucial for fast iteration. The goal is simply to h…

Right that makes sense. I’m curious if the gaming industry will switch languages, it feels like with the current game engines that it’s heavily entrenched in C and C++. Feels like something like Carbon has the best chance to break in.

A chunk has already switched to C# with Unity. Most other engines (proprietary, Unreal, etc) have decades of C++ that would require too much effort to migrate to anything new.

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

#120

Post by [deleted] »

henry_viii wrote: post #98
stephc_int13 wrote: post #17

I'd love to see more about Jai. I don't understand why they are not working in the open, this is a tool, not a game, input for a large community is extremely valuable. But as brilliant as Jon Blow is, he is at least equally as stubborn. Fast compilation and nice, easy to read syntax with good default is exactly what I am looking for. I can understand the hype about metaprogramming, and its potential usefulness, but I…

I'm surprised the author didn't mention the Lobster programming language when evaluating a successor language: https://github.com/aardappel/lobster The language seems to be exactly what he was looking for - a high-performance high-level language specifically designed for video games.

[deleted]
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