It's kindof funny that when you paste this url to Google+, the url will read "C Programming Language Checklist" (because of the favicon..)
Why your new programming language won't work
61–70 of 70 posts
Re: Why your new programming language won't work
#62About ten years ago, a similar checklist was the default response to proposed solutions to spam problems. And then someone wrote a proposal that checked many of the boxes on that list, but had the odd feature of actually working quite well. I think that guy quit went on to start a news web site. I guess he was discouraged by the checklist.
Which boxes did he check, other than the introductory "technical" box (rather than legislative, etc), and arguably the brute force one?
The whole point of the checklist was that people kept re-inventing the square wheel (white-lists, trust circles, black-lists, $0.0001 emails, and so on).
Re: Why your new programming language won't work
#63I can pretty much tell anyone who asks why your new programming language won't work. Its because people like me, the used C for 15 years, Perl for 10, and can't stand Python/Ruby/C#/OtherNewFangledLanguage types... simply do not care about your language. Yup, its that simple. If you can't hook the guys who've been around the block a few times, what hope does your language have?
The digital equivalent of "Get off my lawn!"
Re: Why your new programming language won't work
#64"[ ] You have reinvented PHP better, but that's still no justification" I always like this one. Even thus I have no real thing against PHP, it makes me smile.
I have something against PHP, but there's a deeper point to be made here. A language that does nothing more than reinvent a popular language will not succeed, even if it does a better job. To succeed, a language has to provide a good solution to a problem a lot of developers are having. Some examples: * C - assembly and machine languages are not portable * PHP - the barriers to entry for server-side web programming a…
Clojure[0] - there's too much complexity in programming that isn't inherent to the problems being solved
That is more or less what every language is trying to achieve. It would be more accurate to say "Clojure: All other Lisp implementations are impractical".
Re: Why your new programming language won't work
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have something against PHP, but there's a deeper point to be made here. A language that does nothing more than reinvent a popular language will not succeed, even if it does a better job. To succeed, a language has to provide a good solution to a problem a lot of developers are having. Some examples: * C - assembly and machine languages are not portable * PHP - the barriers to entry for server-side web programming a…
Clojure[0] - there's too much complexity in programming that isn't inherent to the problems being solved That is more or less what every language is trying to achieve. It would be more accurate to say "Clojure: All other Lisp implementations are impractical".
Clojure - because Common Lisp is getting really long in the tooth now.
Re: Why your new programming language won't work
#66He should add:
[ ] Manual memory management is not free.
Re: Why your new programming language won't work
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
People trying to improve things should be encouraged; even if they always fail; and if its related to programming it should be here. People that mock those people should be taken as amateur comedians, and should be on reddit (not here).
"People trying to improve things should be encouraged; even if they always fail" No, people trying to improve things should be presented with (sane) "barriers to entry". While there is no "right" way to improve things, there are tons of certified wrong, dead-end, been-here-done-that ways that should be avoided. Engineering is nothing if we don't learn from our collective mistakes, our history, and from proven theory.…
Is it too much to ask that an intellectual community like HN be a place free from both adulation and derision?
Re: Why your new programming language won't work
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have something against PHP, but there's a deeper point to be made here. A language that does nothing more than reinvent a popular language will not succeed, even if it does a better job. To succeed, a language has to provide a good solution to a problem a lot of developers are having. Some examples: * C - assembly and machine languages are not portable * PHP - the barriers to entry for server-side web programming a…
Clojure[0] - there's too much complexity in programming that isn't inherent to the problems being solved That is more or less what every language is trying to achieve. It would be more accurate to say "Clojure: All other Lisp implementations are impractical".
I don't think so. Many languages - I'm specifically thinking of Java and C# here - have made it their goal to manage complexity. Rich Hickey has made it an explicit goal to eliminate incidental complexity and has spoken about it on several occasions.
Re: Why your new programming language won't work
#69I can pretty much tell anyone who asks why your new programming language won't work. Its because people like me, the used C for 15 years, Perl for 10, and can't stand Python/Ruby/C#/OtherNewFangledLanguage types... simply do not care about your language. Yup, its that simple. If you can't hook the guys who've been around the block a few times, what hope does your language have?
How old do you think Python is? :3 (Answer: 20 years old; it was first publicly talked about in 1991. Python is as old as Linux!)
Here's my favorite trivia story about how old Python is:
You know JWZ's rant about how Java could have made integers first class objects by using the first bit as a flag for whether that machine word contained a primitive type or a pointer to an object, at the cost of only having a range of 2^31 instead of 2^32 (or whatever the word size was)? Python apparently had the same discussion in the early days, and made the same decision as Java (i.e. non-primitive integers, you have to box them to treat them as objects) and the reason was ... that the requisite bit twiddling was slow on DEC Alphas. (In fairness, at the time Guido was working for a government lab full of DEC Alphas.)
Re: Why your new programming language won't work
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not sure I understand where the pandering was, and for me the post certainly wasn't pointless Yes it's not pointless the first time you see it. Where it becomes pointless is on Slashdot any time there is ever an article about a new program language and 2 or 3 people fill it out for the comments.
Thankfully, HN's content is not governed by the content of Slashdot's comments.
Amen to that. I don't know why I have to be downvoted just for pointing out that these things are not necessarily annoying per se, just when they become relentless memes by which a community validates itself.