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Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

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Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#11

Post by azhenley »

compscistd wrote: post #6
azhenley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my extremely biased view from HN, Reddit, and Twitter, it seems like nearly every dev has their own toy language project. The number of language announcements and compiler tutorials on HN is astronomical, several of which are from myself.

But it’s not __approachable__, at least not to me. Seems like survivorship bias to point to nearly every dev with a toy language project. I might feel similarly if I finish nand2tetris

I agree that it needs to be more approachable! That’s why I recently released a tutorial series, Let’s make a Teeny Tiny compiler: http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/teenytinycompiler1.html

Ironically enough, a lot of the criticism of my tutorial was that we have plenty of compiler tutorials already and don’t need any new languages...

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#12

Post by tosh »

Already super excited about what will come of this.

somewhat related: the Pioneer challenge calling for a "Terminal 2.0" happened this weekend and you can check out the submissions here:

https://frontier.pioneer.app/challenge

I love ambitious challenges like these. Is there a hackathon for reinventing the browser? Refreshing to re-think fundamentals once in a while. Thanks for organizing the jam!

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#13

Post by ibdknox »

simias wrote: post #7
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #2

> We built Repl.it to make it easy to explore and learn languages and programming paradigms. We were, however, surprised by how slow-moving the programming language space seems to be. Given how fast software is growing, shouldn’t we see more innovation in programming languages? Isn't this like saying: "the construction industry is growing fast, how come there are no new hammers being invented every other week?" I, to…

I've been coding for almost 20 years now, I definitely saw many changes in that time. Languages like Java and C# became huge, scripting languages like Python or JavaScript became not-just-scripting-languages. C went from "The English of programing languages" to "The Latin of programing languages". Then you have a newer generation starting to take over some niches with the likes of Go, Rust and a few others. If anythi…

> I wish that a big company like Google, Apple or Microsoft attempted something bold in that space.

Me too. I tried stirring things up a bit when we were nearing the end of Eve, but nobody bit. This is work that _can_ be done, someone just has to fund it and let it grow without too much interference. The big players certainly have the ability to take care of the first part, not so sure about the second though.

> I remember the Lighttable editor making a bit of a buzz a few years ago

It's hard to believe.. but that was 8(!) years ago now. Time sure does fly.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#14

Post by tlarkworthy »

simias wrote: post #7
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #2

> We built Repl.it to make it easy to explore and learn languages and programming paradigms. We were, however, surprised by how slow-moving the programming language space seems to be. Given how fast software is growing, shouldn’t we see more innovation in programming languages? Isn't this like saying: "the construction industry is growing fast, how come there are no new hammers being invented every other week?" I, to…

I've been coding for almost 20 years now, I definitely saw many changes in that time. Languages like Java and C# became huge, scripting languages like Python or JavaScript became not-just-scripting-languages. C went from "The English of programing languages" to "The Latin of programing languages". Then you have a newer generation starting to take over some niches with the likes of Go, Rust and a few others. If anythi…

Neural networks/teach by example is that program representation paradigm change.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#15

Post by cuddlybacon »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #2

> We built Repl.it to make it easy to explore and learn languages and programming paradigms. We were, however, surprised by how slow-moving the programming language space seems to be. Given how fast software is growing, shouldn’t we see more innovation in programming languages? Isn't this like saying: "the construction industry is growing fast, how come there are no new hammers being invented every other week?" I, to…

From the intro page:

> One answer could be that programmers are not that interested in thinking about languages. Or that our languages today are sufficient and everyone is happy. But spend a few minutes on any programming forum, and it’ll become clear that a lack of enthusiasm and opinions on languages could not be the reason why we don’t see more programming languages.

Are construction workers constantly complaining about their hammers and not seeing change? If not, then the analogy doesn't really work.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#16

Post by gver10 »

Nothing per se against repl.it, but I'm surprised to see this on #1 of the front page as it's basically a call to free labour. Will there ever be a future when companies innovate themselves again? IMHO all these "hackathons" or "jams" are really just about finding use cases for their product and getting it tested for a very affordable reward ...

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#17

Post by onion2k »

simias wrote: post #7
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #2

> We built Repl.it to make it easy to explore and learn languages and programming paradigms. We were, however, surprised by how slow-moving the programming language space seems to be. Given how fast software is growing, shouldn’t we see more innovation in programming languages? Isn't this like saying: "the construction industry is growing fast, how come there are no new hammers being invented every other week?" I, to…

I've been coding for almost 20 years now, I definitely saw many changes in that time. Languages like Java and C# became huge, scripting languages like Python or JavaScript became not-just-scripting-languages. C went from "The English of programing languages" to "The Latin of programing languages". Then you have a newer generation starting to take over some niches with the likes of Go, Rust and a few others. If anythi…

Computers got fast enough that applications can now be usable and useful despite doing things in massively inefficient ways. That inefficiency is wasteful in terms of CPU cycles but it can also be helpful in terms of development cost as it means developers can spend less time on problems like designing efficient data structures. For example, an inefficient JS application that uses reference passing is much easier to write than an efficient application that requires the developer to manage pointers and memory addressing. That's a good thing for the 99% of software that runs on CPUs that are idle 98% of the time, and a terrible thing if you have a CPU-bound programme.

That inefficiency has a beneficial side effect too - it eliminates whole classes of bugs that come from devs doing hard stuff.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#18

Post by tester756 »

simias wrote: post #7
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #2

> We built Repl.it to make it easy to explore and learn languages and programming paradigms. We were, however, surprised by how slow-moving the programming language space seems to be. Given how fast software is growing, shouldn’t we see more innovation in programming languages? Isn't this like saying: "the construction industry is growing fast, how come there are no new hammers being invented every other week?" I, to…

I've been coding for almost 20 years now, I definitely saw many changes in that time. Languages like Java and C# became huge, scripting languages like Python or JavaScript became not-just-scripting-languages. C went from "The English of programing languages" to "The Latin of programing languages". Then you have a newer generation starting to take over some niches with the likes of Go, Rust and a few others. If anythi…

https://www.luna-lang.org/

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#19

Post by sixhobbits »

gver10 wrote: post #16

Nothing per se against repl.it, but I'm surprised to see this on #1 of the front page as it's basically a call to free labour. Will there ever be a future when companies innovate themselves again? IMHO all these "hackathons" or "jams" are really just about finding use cases for their product and getting it tested for a very affordable reward ...

If you hang around the Repl.it community a bit I think you'd be convinced that this is not their motivation :)

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#20

Post by amasad »

gver10 wrote: post #16

Nothing per se against repl.it, but I'm surprised to see this on #1 of the front page as it's basically a call to free labour. Will there ever be a future when companies innovate themselves again? IMHO all these "hackathons" or "jams" are really just about finding use cases for their product and getting it tested for a very affordable reward ...

We make all of our money from the education market through our classroom products and believe me teachers don't need more languages to teach nor in a hundred years will they teach a hobbyist language.

So I invite you to provide a compelling case for how this is a call for free labour.

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