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This made me find and read "Growing a language" https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/steele.pdf https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/

This made me find and read "Growing a language" https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/steele.pdf https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/steele.pdf "In a race, a small language with warts will beat a well designed language because users will not wait for the right thing; they will use the language that is quick and cheap, and put up with the warts. Once a small language fills a niche, it is hard to take its place."

earthtolazlo 9y ago
That's JavaScript in a nutshell.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  And UNIX.
  - eikenberry 9y ago
    I think the "worse is better" [1] theory explains this much better. Although Javascript had the additional benefit of not having any competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
    - tomjakubowski 9y ago
      No competition? How about Flash, Java applets, ActiveX, Silverlight, and even VBScript -- which Microsoft pushed to compete directly with JavaScript as the embedded scripting language for the web.
      - srcmap 9y ago
        JavaScript lives in a more diverse environments: Multiple browsers, webkit engine, now NodeJS, React, etc. Varieties, cross pollination from different JS engine/teams make JS much stronger. Flash, ActiveX, Silverlight, VBScript are all seem more mono-culture - Start to die as soon as the parent organizations/core dev team loss interest / move on to to next best thing. Flash is a successful until CPU usage, security issues kill it. Just like strong mono-culture plant in a farm got wipe out certain deceases/virus.
      - pcr0 9y ago
        All of those were either additional plugins that had to be installed, came with a huge vulnerability surface and/or were closed standards.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
westoncb 9y ago
Thanks for the link. I hadn't heard of it, but ended up reading through just now. For any else who hasn't come across it before, it's a simultaneous discussion of and example of what it means to express oneself using a 'small' language. It also gets into how such small languages may be effectively designed to grow into larger languages. The document itself is an example of the process using a subset of the English language, but Steele's focus is on planning/architecting programming languages which can be effectively grown by: providing effective, general primitives which can be used to define new terms and rules for the language; and structuring the language development process in 'bazaar' fashion, allowing many people to participate in design and implementation, while someone with excellent judgement surveys contributions with an eye for good ideas/work. I liked this quote, which is a fairly typical example of some definitions he has to make in order to stick to his own rules for the project: Meta means that you step back from your own place. What you used to do is now what you see. What you were is now what you act on. Verbs turn to nouns. What you used to think of as a pattern is now treated as a thing to put in the slot of an other pattern. A meta foo is a foo in whose slots you can put foos. (His use of pattern here is in the sense of pattern vs. instance.) I thought his conclusions on what he learned by carrying out the project were also interesting and insightful. Here's part of it: I learned in my youth, from the books of such great teachers of writing as Strunk and White, that it is better to choose short words when I can. I should not choose long, hard words just to make other persons think that I know a lot. I should try to make my thoughts clear; if they are clear and right, then other persons can judge my work as it ought to be judged. Edit: fixed formatting.
orbitur 9y ago
Swift is an interesting anomaly in that the incentive to use it is so great, that tens of thousands of devs are willing to put up with the growing pains.
clusmore 9y ago
YouTube link for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 9y ago
This should be in the preface to the Rust Evangelism Strikeforce Field Operations Manual.
- mrkgnao 9y ago
  Nah, you haven't really avoided success at all costs until you've evangelized a committee-designed functional language with pervasive laziness.

earthtolazlo 9y ago

That's JavaScript in a nutshell.

nothrabannosir 9y ago
And UNIX.
- eikenberry 9y ago
  I think the "worse is better" [1] theory explains this much better. Although Javascript had the additional benefit of not having any competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
  - tomjakubowski 9y ago
    No competition? How about Flash, Java applets, ActiveX, Silverlight, and even VBScript -- which Microsoft pushed to compete directly with JavaScript as the embedded scripting language for the web.
    - srcmap 9y ago
      JavaScript lives in a more diverse environments: Multiple browsers, webkit engine, now NodeJS, React, etc. Varieties, cross pollination from different JS engine/teams make JS much stronger. Flash, ActiveX, Silverlight, VBScript are all seem more mono-culture - Start to die as soon as the parent organizations/core dev team loss interest / move on to to next best thing. Flash is a successful until CPU usage, security issues kill it. Just like strong mono-culture plant in a farm got wipe out certain deceases/virus.
    - pcr0 9y ago
      All of those were either additional plugins that had to be installed, came with a huge vulnerability surface and/or were closed standards.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

westoncb 9y ago

Thanks for the link. I hadn't heard of it, but ended up reading through just now. For any else who hasn't come across it before, it's a simultaneous discussion of and example of what it means to express oneself using a 'small' language. It also gets into how such small languages may be effectively designed to grow into larger languages. The document itself is an example of the process using a subset of the English language, but Steele's focus is on planning/architecting programming languages which can be effectively grown by: providing effective, general primitives which can be used to define new terms and rules for the language; and structuring the language development process in 'bazaar' fashion, allowing many people to participate in design and implementation, while someone with excellent judgement surveys contributions with an eye for good ideas/work. I liked this quote, which is a fairly typical example of some definitions he has to make in order to stick to his own rules for the project: Meta means that you step back from your own place. What you used to do is now what you see. What you were is now what you act on. Verbs turn to nouns. What you used to think of as a pattern is now treated as a thing to put in the slot of an other pattern. A meta foo is a foo in whose slots you can put foos. (His use of pattern here is in the sense of pattern vs. instance.) I thought his conclusions on what he learned by carrying out the project were also interesting and insightful. Here's part of it: I learned in my youth, from the books of such great teachers of writing as Strunk and White, that it is better to choose short words when I can. I should not choose long, hard words just to make other persons think that I know a lot. I should try to make my thoughts clear; if they are clear and right, then other persons can judge my work as it ought to be judged. Edit: fixed formatting.

orbitur 9y ago

Swift is an interesting anomaly in that the incentive to use it is so great, that tens of thousands of devs are willing to put up with the growing pains.

clusmore 9y ago

YouTube link for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bitwize 9y ago

This should be in the preface to the Rust Evangelism Strikeforce Field Operations Manual.

mrkgnao 9y ago
Nah, you haven't really avoided success at all costs until you've evangelized a committee-designed functional language with pervasive laziness.