Comment by gingerBill | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gingerBill | Hacker News Reader

Odin is a programming language without any silly complex build system, it is as simple as "odin build .", even for large projects.

Linking is done by describing it as part of the code with its `foreign` system [1][2]. The benefit of this approach is that your code itself describes what needs to be linked against what. It also has the benefit that if you don't use a foreign library, it doesn't get linked against due to its minimal dependency system.

If you want to see huge examples of this, I recommend checking out the vendor library collection[3].

n.b. I am the creator of Odin, and one of the original goals was to create a language that didn't necessitate a complex build system and just get to programming. Requiring a complex build system and package manager are anti-features in my opinion and make programming a worse experience to use. Odin borrows heavily from (in order of philosophy and impact): Pascal, C, Go, Oberon-2, Newsqueak, GLSL.[4]

Niklaus Wirth and Rob Pike have been the programming language design idols throughout this project.

[1] https://odin-lang.org/docs/overview/#foreign-system

[2] https://odin-lang.org/news/binding-to-c/

[3] https://github.com/odin-lang/Odin/tree/master/vendor

[4] https://odin-lang.org/docs/faq/#what-have-been-the-major-inf...

+1 for Odin. It's a very nice language to use, very rarely has bugs in the compiler, and has never required more than an 'odin build .' to build my projects. It does a lot of things right and removes a lot of the cruft of other languages.

In the rare instances where you do have bugs in the compiler, have you been able to resolve them reasonably? Or is it deeper language issues that you then have to work around? Not trying to poke holes; it seems really cool and I want to try it myself soon.

Most compiler bugs I’ve seen (a rare occurrence) had decent workarounds that didn’t require much effort, and kept me moving while I waited for a fix (the community responds very fast).

Overall, the design of the language is very clean and well thought out. Every decision that was made, and continues to be made, feels like it was put there for a reason; and, for the most part, nothing feels out of place.

Odin has poor support for Windows:

https://github.com/odin-lang/Odin/discussions/2047

This issue is asking Odin to move away from Visual Studio (by which I assume they just mean the MSVC toolset), which is by far a highly preferred environment for C++ programming on Windows[0]. Saying it has poor support for windows because of this is a bit hyperbolic at best and misleading at worst.

Additionally, the issue has a build script using a different compiler and the asker basically said it wasn't good enough for them.

[0]: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/cpp/

According to this survey, Visual Studio is preferred by 24% of respondents, just behind VsCode and CLion. And MSVC is the 3rd most popular compiler, just behing gcc and clang. And keep in mind these results are across all C++ developers, not just windows developers.

Visual Studio is a bloated mess, and has been for many years. Its at least 10 times larger than other options, such as MinGW-LLVM:

https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw

> This issue is asking Odin to move away from Visual Studio (by which I assume they just mean the MSVC toolset), which is by far a highly preferred environment for C++ programming on "[0].

Your source does not support your claim at all.

Even though vscose and Visual Studio are reported as popular IDEs, you're not talking about IDEs. You're discussing compilers and compiler toolchains, which is not the same thing as a IDE. Microsoft's msvc compiler is not the same as Microsoft's Visual Studio. Visual Studio is an IDE which, among other things, uses msbuild and msvc compiler.

The poll you quoted states that 78% use GCC regularly, followed by clang being used regularly by 43%. Microsoft's msvc compiler is in 3rd place at 30%. The same poll also points out that 55% uses cake and 36% use Makefiles regularly, and Visual Studio projects showing up in 3rd place with 31%.

You left out the last part of my statement, in context I said:

> by far a highly preferred environment for C++ programming on Windows

The survey doesn't split the responses up by OS. That's besides the point, I'm not trying to say MSVC is the most popular toolchain. I'm refuting the claim that if you only support MSVC on Windows that constitutes "poor windows support".

> Microsoft's msvc compiler is in 3rd place at 30%.

Yes, and the question for this was "Which compilers do you regularly use?". 78% + 43% + 30% = 151% which is greater than 100%. I'm assuming this means that respondents were allowed to select multiple answers. It seems to make sense to me that people that use MSVC commonly use other compilers when developing for Unix, but the reverse isn't true nearly as much in my experience. Besides that, MSVC is in 3rd place and pretty close to the same amount of users as clang which was the proposed alternative. In that case it really doesn't matter which one you choose to support because you'll be supporting about the same number of people either way.

Anyways, this doesn't matter to the claim that I was trying to refute. OP said that Odin has poor Windows support and pointed to an issue that basically said if you only support MSVC on Windows that's not good enough. As a Windows developer, that seems like an odd stance to take imo. This survey shows that a third of developers use MSVC across all domains, including Unix. This seems to imply that if you support MSVC, you're at least supporting a large percentage of devs.

Also, I didn't mention the build systems because that's irrelevant. You can use CMake and Make with MSVC or whatever compiler you have installed. I say this as someone that regularly uses CMake and/or Make to compile projects on Windows using MSVC.[0][1]

[0]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/creati...

[1]: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/variable/MSVC.html

That issue doesn't justify saying it has poor support. Rust is known to have excellent support for Windows, and has the exact same dependency.

I don't think you know what you're talking about. Rust has "windows-gnu", which doesn't require a Visual Studio installation.

The ad-hominem isn't advancing your cause lol. Rust defaults to the MSVC toolchain. Surely you knew that. You have to go out of your way to install the incompatible GNU toolchain.

You're the only one here complaining about MSVC. Have you stopped to consider why Rust and Odin and so many other languages are happily depending on MSVC instead of the alternatives? Or does none of that matter and your opinion is the only correct opinion?

> incompatible GNU toolchain.

incompatible? incompatible with what? Ive been using it for years with no problem.

> You're the only one here complaining about MSVC.

The ad-hominem isn't advancing your cause lol.

> The ad-hominem isn't advancing your cause lol.

There was no ad-hominem. OP pointed out your initial claim contrasts with the facts.

> Rust defaults to the MSVC toolchain. Surely you knew that. (...)

This reads like a non-sequitur. The claim you've replied to was that Odin had poor windows support, and OP pointed out that Rust also supported Windows without msvc toolchains.

> You're the only one here complaining about MSVC.

Sorry, you're clearly speaking while oblivious to the discussion. The message you've replied to includes a link to a ticket asking Odin to shed it's dependency on msvc. It's clearly titled "move away from msvc".

https://github.com/odin-lang/Odin/discussions/2047

I believe you owe OP an apology.

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