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Heh, the article is kind of negative about Haskell's "success", but fun is exactly the reason why I still prefer Haskell over all other languages.
It's probably also the reason statistically no one will be employed to work on a Haskell code base. Same for Lisp, F#, OCaml, etc. They're the hot rods of the software development world where everyone uses SUVs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
C++ succeeded because it was Object Oriented, people didn't start talking about RAII as C++ killer feature until years later python succeeded because it wasn't Perl's TMTOWTDI, everyone expected ruby to overtake python, but .. for some reason that never happened swift succeeded because apple pushed it to replace objective c, that if you consider swift succeeded anyway, i agree with your premise, languages need one ke…
I don't think C++ succeeded because it was object-oriented. I think C++ was object-oriented because classes were an abstraction that could layer on top of C with fairly low overhead, giving it more expressive power without much mandatory cost to size or speed. In other words, object-orientation was the means, not the end.
I tried to read this with an open mind but the premise of the article is so reductive I gave up quickly. There’s a whole plethora of reasons a language might fall in or out of favour. From ecosystem lock in (eg Objective-C was mandatory for Apple development prior to swift and Visual Basic was ostensibly killed by Microsoft during the dot net upsell) to fragmentation in the community (eg Perl vs Raku). These don’t me…
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 b…
- C: Users often praise the simplicity of the language
- C++: Users often praise (not always praise?) the large feature set for a low level language
- Python: Folks talk a lot about "batteries included". Although in all honesty, I think having good interaction with other low-level languages is Python's secret feature.
- Java: Really leans in hard to object oriented programming
- JavaScript: Haha, you have to use it!
Not sure I'm really disagreeing with you though, but I think Java promoted its portability much more than it's ever been used (obviously there are cases like Spark which uses the JVM portability).
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 b…
Coming with a platform that is widely available or compatibility with an existing language on a platform was the killer feature for each.
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 b…
I tried to read this with an open mind but the premise of the article is so reductive I gave up quickly. There’s a whole plethora of reasons a language might fall in or out of favour. From ecosystem lock in (eg Objective-C was mandatory for Apple development prior to swift and Visual Basic was ostensibly killed by Microsoft during the dot net upsell) to fragmentation in the community (eg Perl vs Raku). These don’t me…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yes, you're absolutely right. Apple is making a choice here, and they absolutely have impact on what the developers "get to use" - much as .Net succeeds largely to vendor choices on Windows, too. And developers get to suck it up! That's the three axis thing again: vocation, art, job. Swift and .Net both got a huge kick from the "job" department. That's how it goes.
> That's the three axis thing again: vocation, art, job. Swift and .Net both got a huge kick from the "job" department. Granted, Swift got a huge kick from the job department, but what you wrote said a lot more than that: > A language that makes life hard will not survive past the moment it can be replaced. > Objective-C was awkward as both art and job, and it thrived for fifteen years because it was the only door in…
Heh, the article is kind of negative about Haskell's "success", but fun is exactly the reason why I still prefer Haskell over all other languages.