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Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

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Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#21

Post by flohofwoe »

ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #19

This is meant as more of a general comment than to critisize this editor: I fail to see the selling point of an editor that "can't do much", but is performant - there is an abundance of these already. If you made an editor that does "everything" and is "fast", I may be interested. 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 commun…

This looks at least untypical for a "small and fast" editor in that it is a UI application, not running in the terminal like vi or nano.

Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#22

Post by vblanco »

Rochus wrote: post #9

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?

Jai has a few unique features that are quite interesting. You can think of it as C with extremelly powerful metaprogramming, compile-time codegen and reflection, and strong template systems, plus a few extra niceties like native bump allocator support or things like easily creating custom iterators. There is nothing quite like it.

Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#23

Post by ReleaseCandidat »

flohofwoe wrote: post #17
Rochus wrote: post #15

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,…

> Traditionally, there has been a real lack of "better C" languages.

There never has been. There has been a lack of really successfull C alternatives for some time (after everything that wasn't unixish or Windows died, except for MacOS and Objective-C) - and still is. Rust is still less used than Pascal has been 30 years ago.

Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#24

Post by flohofwoe »

Rochus wrote: post #20
flohofwoe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> Now since a few years we suddenly have a number of promising options but still not enough 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…

> how do you recognize that there are still not enough options

One language that's still missing is a simple C-like language that offers Rust-style memory safety but without Rust's design philosophy of repeating every C++ mistake (that's not about memory safety) and high level type system wankery (or generally too much influence from functional languages).

There are also many more areas still to explore when it comes to memory safety that are less extreme than Rust's approach (I completely forgot about Vale which tries out some really interesting things in that direction: https://vale.dev/)

Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#25

Post by Rochus »

vblanco wrote: post #22
Rochus wrote: post #9

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?

Jai has a few unique features that are quite interesting. You can think of it as C with extremelly powerful metaprogramming, compile-time codegen and reflection, and strong template systems, plus a few extra niceties like native bump allocator support or things like easily creating custom iterators. There is nothing quite like it.

Thanks. I guess the "extremelly powerful metaprogramming", "compile-time codegen" and "strong template systems" are essentially the same thing. So the unique selling point of Jai from your perspective would be "C with generic metaprogramming, iterators and reflection"? Besides reflection, which is quite limited in C++, this would essentially be a subset of C++, isn't it?

Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#26

Post by paddim8 »

Rochus wrote: post #15
flohofwoe wrote: post #13

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?

No language is perfect. There is nothing wrong with making your own that works the way you want a language to work. I don't get people who complain about new languages. Variety is good. Let people have fun.

Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#27

Post by Rochus »

flohofwoe wrote: post #24
Rochus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now since a few years we suddenly have a number of promising options but still not enough 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…

> how do you recognize that there are still not enough options One language that's still missing is a simple C-like language that offers Rust-style memory safety but without Rust's design philosophy of repeating every C++ mistake (that's not about memory safety) and high level type system wankery (or generally too much influence from functional languages). There are also many more areas still to explore when it comes…

> is a simple C-like language that offers Rust-style memory safety

Ok, I see; but why then not just add this feature to C, or maybe Zig?

> many more areas still to explore when it comes to memory safety that are less extreme than Rust's approach

Such as memory arenas/pools (like Ada), or runtime automatic garbage collection?

Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#28

Post by ReleaseCandidat »

flohofwoe wrote: post #21
ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #19

This is meant as more of a general comment than to critisize this editor: I fail to see the selling point of an editor that "can't do much", but is performant - there is an abundance of these already. If you made an editor that does "everything" and is "fast", I may be interested. 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 commun…

This looks at least untypical for a "small and fast" editor in that it is a UI application, not running in the terminal like vi or nano.

That's true. The modern day obsession with the terminál (emulátors) is something I don't get either. But I actually did use Unix back than (mostly Irix, which was the MacOS of it s day).

Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#29

Post by Rochus »

paddim8 wrote: post #26
Rochus wrote: post #15

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?

No language is perfect. There is nothing wrong with making your own that works the way you want a language to work. I don't get people who complain about new languages. Variety is good. Let people have fun.

Innovation is good. There is a tradeoff between the benefit of choice and waste. Duplication is a good candidate for waste.

Re: Focus: A simple and fast text editor written in Jai

#30

Post by [deleted] »

flohofwoe wrote: post #14
konsuko wrote: post #12

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…

If Jai can only be judged once it's public, Zig should only be judged once it hits 1.0 though. Personally I put a lot more trust into Zig than Jai.

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