11–20 of 105 posts
Given that the compiler for this language is not publicly available, is this still open source, considering that you cannot easily modify and rebuild it to your liking, despite being GPL?
Oh, and the compile times are just a joy, almost no other language even comes close to the speed of iteration that's possible with Jai, which is another great reason to use it for games and prototyping in general.
It's interesting to look at the source code. However, I have yet to find a clear unique selling point that justifies the development of a new language and infrastructure, or clearly shows me why I shouldn't just use D, for example. Any hints?
(I'm not a fan of Jai's closed development model though, but to each their own)
Jai is an amazing language to work with, I highly recommend checking it out once it becomes publicly released. It's elegant, simple, performant, takes all the best parts of Zig minus the annoying parts (like errors on unused local variables) and adds a bunch of super useful game development libraries as well as a built-in string type (which I really missed in Zig). Oh, and the compile times are just a joy, almost no…
It's interesting to look at the source code. However, I have yet to find a clear unique selling point that justifies the development of a new language and infrastructure, or clearly shows me why I shouldn't just use D, for example. Any hints?
Personal preferences should be enough to choose a different language or create a new language (e.g. it can be as simple as "I don't like D"), in the end that's how progress happens, individuals not being happy with the status quo, and building something they like. If others like that thing too, it might even become popular (and if this happens without a big company behind it then that thing might even be objectively…
This is my first exposure to Jai code, did not know it was now available to play with! Congrats on building this! Really appreciate your comments in the source.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personal preferences should be enough to choose a different language or create a new language (e.g. it can be as simple as "I don't like D"), in the end that's how progress happens, individuals not being happy with the status quo, and building something they like. If others like that thing too, it might even become popular (and if this happens without a big company behind it then that thing might even be objectively…
Maybe when it comes to learning compiler construction. But otherwise, what's the point of all this effort if the result is hardly different from anything existing? Some innovation or other special feature justifying all the effort to implement the language and toolchain and for the interested parties to adopt it should at least be present. I would still be interested to know where this can be found on Jay. Any hints?
Apparently Jai is specifically tailored to game development problems and frustration with C++ for game dev (or at least it tries to fix rough edges that a typical game developer encounters in existing languages used for game dev) - whether that is actually true I can't tell though since I haven't used Jai yet.
Regarding Jai: the idea about a "language for good programmers" is just about the worst thing ever to say about a language and it's community in my opinion (and I'm being paid as a C and C++ programmer for 20 years now, so I guess I'm at least not totally bad at it).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe when it comes to learning compiler construction. But otherwise, what's the point of all this effort if the result is hardly different from anything existing? Some innovation or other special feature justifying all the effort to implement the language and toolchain and for the interested parties to adopt it should at least be present. I would still be interested to know where this can be found on Jay. Any hints?
In the end it comes down to healthy competition, it doesn't matter much why one thing is better than another, it just has to be preferred by enough people. And all those people may have different opinions on why they would choose one language over another. Traditionally, there has been a real lack of "better C" languages. Now since a few years we suddenly have a number of promising options but still not enough: Odin,…
Well, but how do you recognize that there are still not enough options? I assume it should be a bit more specific than just a feeling or "personal preference", isn't it?
> Rust and D as attempts to a "better C++"
Rust has at least one big unique selling point which was not present so far in any other language (at least I'm not aware of any one): compile time automatic memory management. The unique selling point of D in contrast is not that obvious, at least not to me.
> whether that is actually true I can't tell though since I haven't used Jai yet.
Well then maybe someone else knows.