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Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

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Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#11

Post by jottinger »

lapcat wrote: post #8

It's ridiculous to call Objective-C "a false start". 1) Objective-C is 40 years old. 2) Objective-C was used to create NeXTSTEP and by extension Mac OS X and iOS. 3) Objective-C is no more "awkward" than any other programming language. I actually prefer its verbosity to Swift's terseness. 4) Although Swift did eventually become more popular, the claim about Objective-C that "the moment Swift existed, it evaporated" i…

OP here: Fair. Yet I'd say that it's relatively rare (while being completely absent in my experience) that anyone would choose ObjC today - and the article even mentions Pascal as a stronger example of the model you use with ObjC. ObjC survives today, as does Pascal, but its strongest impact is through influence, just as with Pascal.

And languages being awkward is entirely a personal opinion, agreed. You might think in ObjC. I do not. There's nothing inherently wrong with either of us on those grounds.

Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#12

Post by purplemoonx »

grim_io wrote: post #10
purplemoonx wrote: post #6

Boom: JavaScript Bust: Python

Ridiculous. If anything, the time of the ubiquitous JS might be over when anyone can generate native UI without electron.

Has been trivial to do for 10+ years. Next you’re gonna say I need RN or Expo to write JS for iOS.

JS ecosystem = capitalism, websites, payments

Python = math, language, theory

Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#13

Post by tom_ »

keybored wrote: post #9

> Different diseases, one pathology.

> Sort the corpses that way and they separate cleanly

Just like when you get a bit of meat on the bone in a stew, and it all comes out as one piece - but it's just on the brink, and the slightest of touches with the fork is enough to make it separate cleanly, and it just slides off perfectly.

I love it when that happens. I really feel like the author does too. That's part of why I like reading things written by people. Shared enjoyment of a shared human experience.

Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#14

Post by lapcat »

jottinger wrote: post #11
lapcat wrote: post #8

It's ridiculous to call Objective-C "a false start". 1) Objective-C is 40 years old. 2) Objective-C was used to create NeXTSTEP and by extension Mac OS X and iOS. 3) Objective-C is no more "awkward" than any other programming language. I actually prefer its verbosity to Swift's terseness. 4) Although Swift did eventually become more popular, the claim about Objective-C that "the moment Swift existed, it evaporated" i…

OP here: Fair. Yet I'd say that it's relatively rare (while being completely absent in my experience) that anyone would choose ObjC today - and the article even mentions Pascal as a stronger example of the model you use with ObjC. ObjC survives today, as does Pascal, but its strongest impact is through influence, just as with Pascal. And languages being awkward is entirely a personal opinion, agreed. You might think…

> Yet I'd say that it's relatively rare (while being completely absent in my experience) that anyone would choose ObjC today

There are a number of pragmatic reasons for this. Nobody is teaching ObjC anymore. Apple's documentation is now mostly Swift. Apple recommends Swift (and SwiftUI, despite the fact that many SwiftUI users have found it severely flawed). The job opportunities are mostly in Swift. I would say they're actually the same reasons people adopted ObjC back in the day. (Some other options were available, e.g., Carbon in pure C, Cocoa-Java.) Moreover, some newer Apple API are available only in Swift. Thus, Apple is pushing people into Swift whether they like it or not.

> There's nothing inherently wrong with either of us on those grounds.

Except that the thesis of your article depends on Swift being "more fun".

My belief is that Swift became popular among Apple developers for the same reason that Objective-C did before: Apple promoted the language. People jumped on Swift because they felt it was "the future". Some people were already claiming in 2014 that every line of code you write in Objective-C was "technical debt". Such claims turned out to be absurd, because old ObjC code still compiles and runs, while Swift 1.0 code does not.

Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#15

Post by jottinger »

lapcat wrote: post #14
jottinger wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here: Fair. Yet I'd say that it's relatively rare (while being completely absent in my experience) that anyone would choose ObjC today - and the article even mentions Pascal as a stronger example of the model you use with ObjC. ObjC survives today, as does Pascal, but its strongest impact is through influence, just as with Pascal. And languages being awkward is entirely a personal opinion, agreed. You might think…

> Yet I'd say that it's relatively rare (while being completely absent in my experience) that anyone would choose ObjC today There are a number of pragmatic reasons for this. Nobody is teaching ObjC anymore. Apple's documentation is now mostly Swift. Apple recommends Swift (and SwiftUI, despite the fact that many SwiftUI users have found it severely flawed). The job opportunities are mostly in Swift. I would say they…

Well, the problem here is in your own words: you say `My belief is` - and so it is. I cannot and would never presume to tell you what you believe. Yet I believe otherwise. Swift won on multiple axes; ObjC is still around but feels like legacy to me, much like Pascal does: influential (heck, I use ObjC terminology when describing OO concepts, over Smalltalk!) but not, like, a living language at this point even though its death might be, um, a lot more rumor than fact.

Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#16

Post by rzwitserloot »

To add a few more exotic cases that affect things. Keep in mind that by default new languages fail. To succeed, many things have to all go right at once, and this implies that therefore there is not one single element that, if gotten right, means the language will therefore be successful (it's rather the opposite: If even one of the key factors is wrong, it'll probably fail).

* It's just a guesstimate, but one of those factors that caused java to be successful but-for (as in, if it hadn't had this, it wouldn't have been a success): It copies C style religiously anywhere it could get away with it. This caused some damage to the language that it has fixed in the past decade (such as the style and behaviour of `switch` being so bizarre - but it religiously follows exactly how it works in C!)

* Some languages end up failing partly due to community outlook. Scala is somewhat well known for having a core community that is highly aggressive and elitist, or to be a bit milder, to be 'less accepting of newbies with a limited understanding of programming concepts' than is optimal'. And in addition to that, they are in contrast to the java ecosystem ready to drop support for stuff quickly, meaning: Real life actual use of scala as a basis means you're either working with a hopelessly obsolete codebase or you're spending time refactoring it every other month pretty much. Scala's adoption is fading and never got anywhere near its hyped future.

* If a language is 'native to a platform' which I define as: "If the shepherds/owners of that platform were to write a basic app for their own platform, what language would they write it in? That's the 'native to that platform' language", then it tends to succeed even if it is not fun and not very well designed and even if transpilers exist. This is sufficient explanation for me for the success of javascript: It is the native-to-the-platform language if the biggest platform around.

These all fit within the thesis. They're all (last one is debatable) very human factors.

Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#17

Post by mojuba »

Yes to all that but still, my pet theory is that languages rise on one or two "killer features" that move the entire industry forward, and not the overall cuteness or lovability.

I can suggest a list of one killer feature per each popular language, i.e. things that these languages were the first to introduce and influence many successors:

C: extreme conciseness

C++: implicit destructors / RAII

Python: removed curly braces

Java: extreme portability

JavaScript: erm...

PHP: embedded in HTML by design

Rust: compile-time memory management

Swift: structured concurrency (pre-6 was probably just pure cuteness)

etc.

Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#18

Post by lapcat »

jottinger wrote: post #15
lapcat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet I'd say that it's relatively rare (while being completely absent in my experience) that anyone would choose ObjC today There are a number of pragmatic reasons for this. Nobody is teaching ObjC anymore. Apple's documentation is now mostly Swift. Apple recommends Swift (and SwiftUI, despite the fact that many SwiftUI users have found it severely flawed). The job opportunities are mostly in Swift. I would say they…

Well, the problem here is in your own words: you say `My belief is` - and so it is. I cannot and would never presume to tell you what you believe. Yet I believe otherwise. Swift won on multiple axes; ObjC is still around but feels like legacy to me, much like Pascal does: influential (heck, I use ObjC terminology when describing OO concepts, over Smalltalk!) but not, like, a living language at this point even though…

> ObjC is still around but feels like legacy to me

Yes, it feels like legacy because Apple is making it into legacy. Do you not admit that Apple's actions have a profound effect on the relative adoption of the two languages among Apple developers?

I would note that Swift is, like Objective-C, almost nonexistent outside of the Apple ecosystem, even though cross-platform use is possible. Developers who are deliberately outside the Apple ecosystem are generally not interested in a programming language controlled by Apple.

Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#19

Post by jillesvangurp »

There's more to a language than the syntax. The libraries, tools, and the ecosystem of developers, documentation, support, etc. are much more important. There are quite a few academic languages that are interesting to people that never really gain much traction because the people behind them just never commit to proper ecosystem building.

Switching languages is a big time commitment. Or at least it used to be. I find myself more open to that now that I can hit the ground running with AI coding tools in most languages. But still, it's a time investment to learn a language, its idioms, its way of doing things, all the tools, libraries, and frameworks, etc. It's not something you do an in afternoon. And certainly not mid project.

The languages that people gravitate to are the ones that look like they are safe, future proof bets. If you are going to spend all this energy learning one, you want to know it's a good investment. Successful languages have lots of users, decent tools, good libraries, etc. Or at least they look like there are serious people behind them. Many people make these bets early in their careers and then stick to them as well. I meet a fair share of people my age that are still sticking to Java. Because that's what they learned when they were in their twenties. I'm 51 now.

Rust is a good example of a language that's hard to learn but managed to get off the ground because of the solid people behind it. It wasn't just an academic exercise: Mozilla was trying to solve a real problem and they managed to get a nice community behind the language and it grew from there. This is not something that happens a lot. People create new languages all the time. But many stay very niche and the projects around them tend to go stale very quickly if they fail to attract a community of users.

Re: Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

#20

Post by Zak »

I was hoping it would address Lisp.

Lisp is fun. The interactivity and instant turnaround of a Lisp REPL is still rarely matched in other languages. Common Lisp also solved a significant issue other languages didn't address well until much later: the ability to write high-level code that was fast on cheap hardware around the turn of the millennium.

Lisp didn't get popular around the turn of the millennium. Success stories like Naughty Dog, ITA, and Viaweb were rare, and the dominant languages seemed to be Java and various scripting languages starting with the letter P.

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