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Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

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Re: Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

#301

Post by pjmlp »

horsawlarway wrote: post #205
rightbyte wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He admits C was corp sponsored though. "Admittedly C also came from a corporation but it came free with every unix install and soon after I started using it, Richard Stallman et al. gave us GCC, a free C compiler." But at the time AT&T couldn't spy on its CC users though so the risk was lower I guess.

> But at the time AT&T couldn't spy on its CC users though so the risk was lower I guess. Sure they could... What do you think there were doing when they were selling System III & System V? They compiled customer lists, and sales contacts, contract agreements and everything else you'd expect from an org selling commercial software. Was it "automated" in the same way that tracking use from a package manager is? No. Wa…

UNIX was "free" though, because it was available in source tapes, which none of the competition was, and due to the restrictions on AT&T research use, they were only allowed to charge for a symbolic price of tape replication and sending costs.

The lawsuit and request to take the Lion's commentary out of print came after AT&T got allowed again to take profit from their research.

Re: Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

#302

Post by pjmlp »

YoshiRulz wrote: post #260
horsawlarway wrote: post #82

I think this is a fairly misguided rant, and ignores the real priorities (and risks) that I have as a developer - both personally and professionally. I'm happy to use languages funded by corporations - the incentives for them are clear, they fund development and work on the tooling and spec for their own use-case - they garner additional support, momentum, and goodwill by releasing the language under an open definiti…

Just to turn your own example against you for a moment: Mono is dead. If you were using it for your cross-platform WinForms desktop app, as my team was, you're now stuck with no updates and no migration path to MS' new offering, MAUI (though it still doesn't run on Linux, and nor did the several UI frameworks in between). At least Mono is still getting patches. They even recently did a stable build after a long hiatu…

Mono isn't dead per se, as it is what still powers Xamarin and now Blazor WASM.

Re: Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

#303

Post by pjmlp »

rblatz wrote: post #27
alphazard wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics of independently lead open source is still a problem with no solutions in sight. The economics for corporate controlled open source are quite clear. It's a cost saver for corporations to open source solutions to common problems. This gets others to buy in, which spreads maintenance costs and ensures that no one is seriously winning in the domain of the project. Essentially de-risking cost/benefits in th…

I’d also like to throw another counter example out. C# and Typescript from Microsoft are both excellent languages and are led by Anders Hejlsberg.

Anders Hejlsberg doesn't have anything to do with C# for a few years already.

His focus is TypeScript.

Mads Torgersen has been leading C# design since version 7, more or less.

Re: Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

#304

Post by pjmlp »

cosmotic wrote: post #74
hutzlibu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they've embraced Linux containers in Azure and WSL on windows" I am open to the possibility, that Microsoft changed, but this example is a classic "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" tactic by my understanding. Linux is strong with developers and certain tech, but by incorporating Linux, Microsoft makes devs have many good sides of linux, but with all the nice proprietary windows extensions. So they stay on windows. A…

Do you know any linux users that have switched from linux desktop to Windows because of WSL? I think it's just leading to Windows devs embracing Linux.

No, but I know quite a few that used to buy Mac laptops and now buy Windows ones.

That is the target market, developers that want a POSIX CLI experience and don't care about GNU/Linux to start with.

Re: Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

#305

Post by pjmlp »

hutzlibu wrote: post #189
pelasaco wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if developers move from Linux to Windows + WSL as desktop, in my experience, is because Linux as desktop doesn't offer a great experience for everyone. In some terms, companies trying to sell Linux, did a bad work to get it done well.

Well yes, there are many reasons why linux has problems and people go ways to avoid them, but my point was, that Microsoft did not embrace linux for their new love of open source, but to eat its marketshare. I mean, Linux was never significant on the desktop, but had and still has significant market share for developers. In University I was basically tought how to use Linux and despise Windows. Microsoft does not wan…

They embraced to fight Apple, and nowadays it makes more sense to be compatible with Linux than pure POSIX, even the surviving UNIXes have some form of Linux compatibility layer.

Re: Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

#306

Post by hutzlibu »

pelasaco wrote: post #222
hutzlibu wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, there are many reasons why linux has problems and people go ways to avoid them, but my point was, that Microsoft did not embrace linux for their new love of open source, but to eat its marketshare. I mean, Linux was never significant on the desktop, but had and still has significant market share for developers. In University I was basically tought how to use Linux and despise Windows. Microsoft does not wan…

Yeah, well pretty insignificant market share. Working many year in this market, Linux, Linux Desktops and etc, I can tell you: Microsoft isnt looking to the Linux desktop market share, but to the Mac OSX market share. Windows + WSL is a real contender to Mac OSX as development desktop.

Ok, that's a good point, that the real target is OSX.

Still, I don't think they are happy about SteamOS for example. I mean the absolute numbers are still very low, but if gamers start to see linux as a alternative, Windows might get a problem. And there is still a significant portion of linux only developers and not all of them are FOSS fanatics, but pragmatic, but still don't like the walled garden of OSX.

Re: Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

#308

Post by TUSF »

alphazard wrote: post #291
TUSF wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Odin doesn't do OOP. Zig does. I don't know why a C replacement would try to. What sort of OOP does Zig do, exactly?

The kind with objects that have methods. Look at the examples. They don't have a class hierarchy, but they have something very similar to Go where a data type (object) "owns" a set of procedures (methods). https://ziglang.org/learn/samples/ `try int_queue.enqueue(25);` Go has a pretty sane approach to OOP, with methods forming the basis for interfaces (one of Go's most powerful concepts) very nicely. But Go is not re…

I don't really see this as OOP. It's just sytax sugar.

Re: Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

#309

Post by [deleted] »

horsawlarway wrote: post #273
mixmastamyk wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already do. Still feeling like a personal attack to discuss this idea?

> Otherwise you appear to willfully misunderstand. These may not be your priorities, but taking offense and framing them as "crazy" does a disservice. Show me any non-corporate sponsored language that is not a toy, and is seeing serious traction. (hint - I enjoy Nim, but it's not a valid answer). Unlike the original post implies - most of the languages in his list are corporate sponsored... D was created at Digital M…

[deleted]

Re: Stop Building on Corporate-Controlled Languages

#310

Post by vinceguidry »

unity1001 wrote: post #272
charcircuit wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typoed corporation. My point was that you would become the very thing you were trying to avoid.

There is no problem in organization. What matters is who controls an organization and how it works. A corporation is just an organizational entity. It can be run in many ways. It does not have to be organized and run like a privately owned capitalist corporation.

The difference isn't organization, it's whether the goals of the project need to be yoked to a profit motive. If they are, invariably you're going to eventually put the cart before the horse.
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