Jai Programming Language – Resources and Information | Hacker News Reader

Jai Programming Language – Resources and Information

inductive.no

45 pointsversion_five24 comments

I've watched a bit of Jon's streams programming in jai, and can't say I've seen anything particularly compelling about the language so far.

It's clearly not vaporware, you just have to get into the beta group to kick the tires. I think he's made the right choice in limiting access while he figures out the syntax with some real-world game development. It'd be a tremendous time sink and emotional drag having to deal with the peanut gallery. Just look at the comments in this page, many people are pricks. He's already putting up with a lot of shit from the twitch livestreams.

I’m torn. On the one hand, I respect the need to iterate internally. After all, that worked well for Clojure, a language that I find productive and often enjoy using. And I don’t think the assumptions that it’s vaporware are very fair. On the other hand, Jai has been in development for so long, it is a little tiresome to hear people sing the praises of something that isn’t available for general use or evaluation.

> it is a little tiresome to hear people sing the praises of something that isn’t available for general use or evaluation

I think the pattern is 100% consistent with today's game developer mindset. He's basically giving Early Access via the beta group. He's streamed a lot of development time using the language, surely in part to generate interest and hype, as well as provide guidance to those in the beta group.

It's no surprise some of the fallout is a tiresome level of praise. The vast majority of his fan-base aren't even experienced enough to have an informed critical opinion of any programming language. They're just gamer fan-boys.

IMO it's best to just ignore Jai's existence and whatever these probable clowns are singing in praise, until it's generally available. What we have today in Jai is more like an unfinished pre-print paper uploaded to arxiv generating a bit of hype from the author's fan-base. The jury's still out on if it's any good.

If you have time to waste, just watch some of his programming streams - there's enough being done with the language there to form an opinion on if it's remotely compelling to you.

> The vast majority of his fan-base aren't even experienced enough to have an informed critical opinion of any programming language.

Th at would certainly explain a lot. I’m curious whether this is based on the kind of opinions they offer or if they have actually shared their level of expertise.

I'm just basing it on the quality of discourse I've observed in the twitch streams... there are several Jai Beta Q&A streams which particularly select for people in the beta.

Surely there are some experienced people in the beta playing with the language, but I highly doubt they're who's responsible for the tiresome levels of hype. He's a role model for a lot of budding young game developers, being an indie success story via Braid and The Witness has that effect.

sorry to say, it doesn't convince me at all. to a certain extent, all I can read is the creator's words about how great it is. to be honest, even if he's the second coming of jesus, I just can't take it seriously without a concrete thing to poke and stab.

even if he's the second coming of jesus

If you asked Jon Blow if he is the second coming of jesus, he would probably go on a rant about how jesus didn't know anything and how much better he is. Then he would ban anyone from his twitch stream that asked if he at least liked some the miracles jesus performed.

Jon Blow is very smart and I even think Jai is a great looking language that solves a lot of problems and is well designed.

He is not a good person to proliferate a language though. He doesn't like what other people do in general, let alone what they would do with his language.

This is my feeling on the language. I like the creator and would love a language that professes to doing everything they mention. But, at this point, it all seems like a pipe dream as long as he silos off any actual review or use of it.

This, except for liking the creator, who seems like an arrogant know-it-all the likes of which this discipline has far too many already.

I don’t like how this thread is just attacks on the author and not a discussion about the language

on the other hand the language is not really publicly available so it’s hard to discuss, I guess

This editor is developed with Jai language https://github.com/focus-editor/focus

> designed for good programmers

What does that mean?

It means if you don’t like it, or take any objection to its design then you are not a good programmer and just don’t “get it”.

Considering the author, it’s completely unsurprising.

If your program doesn't work, it's always your fault. Just like C.

It probably means programmers who are so "good" that nobody else wants to work with them.

Thus the codebase is written by one single person, possibly over a short period of time so they can keep everything in their head and then the program is never touched again in the following years.

This way, that programmer can really feel good about themself and feel so superior about all those lesser programmer who have to use safer languages because they live in the real world

Not sure. Must mean Rust is for us bad programmers :)

To be fair Rust programmers are the worst. Source: Rust programmer.

That’s a very good question.

I've heard people have gotten access to the language but I've not seen many games built with it. What have people shipped with this?

A whole lot of use without the compiler.

Remind me of Mojo

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