I love seeing language projects that implement their own compiler backends. There really aren't enough of these around. Anything that helps bridge the knowledge gap between newbies and production grade compilers is a net positive in my books.
And extra brownie points for writing it in C. Think whatever about memory safety and language age but C code is abundantly explicit about what's going on with the code, which is something I really appreciate when approaching some new code to learn stuff.
It's an impressive project for one person to make but if we're talking about it as a prospective general purpose language, that naturally invites comparisons and criticism. I haven't read the comments but I think most people have good intentions when they share their view on this project and aren't personally attacking the author.
The author mentioned in another comment that he was designing the language to use what he likes from other languages and for writing his own game engine. That's a really cool project, and I think he would get a more positive response to his language if he was up front about that on his website. The joy of programming is pretty subjective and the use cases he presents are basically possible to do in any turing complete language.
I saw another language project on hacker news about neo haskell that was some random guy trying to become the benevolent dictator for life of the haskell ecosystem without really talking to anyone in that community. I think stuff like that makes people jaded and cynical (and rightly so in some cases) when folks make overbroad claims about tools that have well established alternatives or existing communities. Not trying to excuse the behavior but that might be part of why people are biased to be negative in cases like these.
No, he was trying to become BDFL of his own project! And why not?
Facts and truth are more important then feelings. We shouldn't lie or be fake just to cater to someones feelings. Ultimately the truth is better in the long term.
Because this is a real thing. Who would use this when there are other more popular languages out there that have basically the same syntax? What does this language excel at above all others ? If the author wants his language to have any chance or shot at real success he needs to address this.
If we just took your advice and didn't be negative in the spirit of "tinkering", "play" and "experimentation" then ultimately that advice is more poisonous than the negativity. You need to identify and test your product for it to be successful. Your advice is to blind him.
Seriously just looking at the web site my first thought was why wouldn't I just use python?
Also, you are assuming some desire by the language designer to have the language be successful (whatever that may mean). One of the stated goals to raise user’s “joy” when programming. I think taking on a challenging problem and crafting a personally desired solution, and doing so well from a brief look at the implementation, is certainly something, that sounds like the kind of activity that could provide a great source of enjoyment/fulfillment/…. So a programmer developing a language they like and enjoy, then wanting to share that makes sense.
The main negatives I have seen expressed are ‘there are already too many programming languages, why add another, that’s a waste’ or ‘what is going to sell this language, the docs don’t make a big sales pitch’, etc. I have not seen any real criticism addressing the semantics and other than some mentions of significant white space vs. curly braces, I haven’t seen criticism related to the syntax.
So, if your negatives, which are so much more important than feelings or if the truths you referenced are substantive criticisms of the actual artifact, I would say lay them out and maybe have a conversation. But I don’t see anything substantial, just complaints about a person pursuing something they choose to pursue and making, what seems to be, a darn good effort in the process.
When I see the "Joy" of programming, honestly I don't care. Pretty much nobody cares. Just because someone says it's joyful doesn't make it joyful. This is essentially what he's saying: "Hey buddy use my generic product that exists in a thousand different forms everywhere, it makes you joyful"
That's why nobody cares. He did well by having examples of the code, he didn't do well by not stating where it excels above other languages. I left thinking it's like python with types.
>So, if your negatives, which are so much more important than feelings or if the truths you referenced are substantive criticisms of the actual artifact, I would say lay them out and maybe have a conversation. But I don’t see anything substantial, just complaints about a person pursuing something they choose to pursue and making, what seems to be, a darn good effort in the process.
If there's enough un-substantive criticism of a product it points to ineffective communication. If everyone is taking a shit on the product then it doesn't even matter if the product is good, it's still shit.
There's your conversation. If you want people to listen and have a conversation you need to effectively communicate. This site spawned a lot of criticism, so that's a problem stemming from the person STARTING the conversation.
You see what I wrote? Sounds mean right? But, personally I think it's better and more real than any advice you've given him.