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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

#51

Post by dnautics »

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 ...

I wouldn't say this is a call to free labor. It would be if you were asked to port an existing unsupported language to repl.it (which is how I read it at first). However, this is a contest to reward building your own totally new language (which presumably you were going to do anyways) at least, for some segment of time, on repl.it. I suppose it could be seen as debugging repl.it for free, because this endeavor is likely to break repl.it in so many unforseeable ways.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#52

Post by jlokier »

azhenley wrote: post #3
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 would have never imagined someone saying the PL space is moving slow. I can’t keep up with all the advances, in practice or research.

Same here. I've seen it described as a "Cambrian explosion" of programming languages in the last few years and I think that's right.

The pace of PL changes and new entrants seems to have quickened immensely in the last 5-10 years.

I don't have a view on the right pace of change, but the idea that it's "slow" feels weird.

I have a lot of PLI ideas myself. I have for a long time, but increasingly it feels like there's little or no need for it (sadly!), because the space is crowded with a steady flux of new entrants and new ideas as it is, many of them well marketed too.

Adding more may be fun to do as an individual. PLD and PLI are fun! But it doesn't seem like we lack for contributors in this area.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#53

Post by jlokier »

pera wrote: post #38
josefrichter wrote: post #25

Elixir, Clojure, Rust, Go, Haskell, Elm, TypeScript, Nim, Crystal, Swift, Kotlin, Dart, Gleam,… – there’s so much new(ish) stuff it’s hard to keep up actually, isn’t there? Not complaining, quite the opposite.

(Haskell is 30 years old :)

Hey, I did Haskell nearly 30 years ago! Even worked on a Haskell compiler, from the first version of the spec.

It has changed a lot, but not unrecognisably :-)

Haskell 1 is older than Python 1, Linux 1, Java, PHP, Internet Explorer 1.0, and the web generally.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#54

Post by scoopertrooper »

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…

> the construction industry is growing fast, how come there are no new hammers being invented every other week?

Maybe not hammers, but there is still a lot of innovation in the basic tools of the construction industry. Look into some of the interesting recent cement innovations, a tool that's been in use since the Romans!

Humans always keep innovating even if the benefits are marginal they add up over time.

I'd say there are still lots of opportunities for language innovation. The increasing reliance on concurrency to achieve performance gains has spurred much of this. People are also looking at languages to simplify formally defined software systems. AI may make it possible for much more terse methods of programming. I'd personally love to see more work done on declarative ETL specific languages.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#55

Post by atiaxi »

pseudonymoushn wrote: post #30

Why does this competition require teams of two or more people? Seems arbitrary.

Yeah, same here - if it were open to solo devs, I'd definitely be more likely to try out making a toy language. As-is, I'm not going to try to get my friends to join in on something that only I'm going to get anything out of.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#56

Post by weedpeg »

We already have enough happening in programming language. Hear me out, IRL we do occasionally try to learn new languages but we spend a lot of time learning new ideas, mental models and frameworks to accumulate and distribute the ideas.

This is akin to various frameworks/libraries/packages in programming world. A new programming language shall only come when something fundamental changes eg. languages to support multiple cores, going back to async as single cores become good enough, quantum computing is going to spin off new languages.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#57

Post by amasad »

atiaxi wrote: post #55
pseudonymoushn wrote: post #30

Why does this competition require teams of two or more people? Seems arbitrary.

Yeah, same here - if it were open to solo devs, I'd definitely be more likely to try out making a toy language. As-is, I'm not going to try to get my friends to join in on something that only I'm going to get anything out of.

We're doing team matching on our discord repl.it/discord

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#58

Post by arunaugustine »

weedpeg wrote: post #56

We already have enough happening in programming language. Hear me out, IRL we do occasionally try to learn new languages but we spend a lot of time learning new ideas, mental models and frameworks to accumulate and distribute the ideas. This is akin to various frameworks/libraries/packages in programming world. A new programming language shall only come when something fundamental changes eg. languages to support mult…

I feel it's more akin to music genres. Sometimes two genres merge to create a new one. So that kind of mix-and-match of ideas can create more programming languages, without waiting for a paradigm change I think.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#59

Post by xixixao »

> 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.

But also: You have to build a REPL.

If I'm constrained to a 60s (50s?) interaction model with my language, how am I gonna build an innovate language? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnZipJOan54&t=394s for my take on PL innovation - can't happen in repl.

That said, this is great, I'm all for encouraging experimentation.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#60

Post by amasad »

xixixao wrote: post #59

> 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. But also: You have to build a REPL. If I'm constrained to a 60s (50s?) interaction model with my language, how am I gonna build an innovate language? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnZipJOan54&t=394s for my take on PL innovation -…

No you don't have to. Build a web experience or GUI. Repl.it supports both environments.
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