5 ms·

Could the goals be accomplished in existing languages, such as Rlang, Haskell, Scala + Akka? Is the added value sufficient for it to find its place?

garritfra 7y ago
We want to provide an easy interface to quickly deploy decentralized services. Compared to alternative languages, the overhead to do so is much smaller with Clio
6700417 7y ago
This is pretty much the first question I ask every time I see a new language pop up. The fact is the “language” part of a programming language is the easy part. The hard part is the ecosystem, tooling, mindshare, etc. If your differentiation is “it’s 35% easier to do task A with my new language vs the next best alternative” then I am afraid you’ve lost me and I suspect most potential users. The effort involved in learning your new system isn’t going to be amortized out by the benefits unless the benefits are very substantial. This is coming from someone who really lives to learn new languages and is spending time most everyday working through new problems in new languages out of personal interest. For your average “just wanna get the job done” type you have an even more uphill battle. Having said all that, it can be a great learning experience to build a new language and it’s always possible you’ll influence changes in preexisting systems that do have an existing user base, so I don’t mean to sound too discouraging to aspiring language designers.
- garritfra 7y ago
  We discussed the problems with the ecosystems and I think you are right. Clio compiles to JavaScript, so it only makes sense to be 100% interoperable with the npm modules out there. We are currently working on that.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  The fact is the “language” part of a programming language is the easy part. The hard part is the ecosystem, tooling, mindshare, etc. This is certainly true, but on the other hand, any new language that will one day be successful needs to start somewhere, or we're going to be writing systems code in bug-ridden C and line-of-business applications in verbose Java forever. A language where doing day-to-day things would be 35% easier than what I use right now is certainly significantly better, IMHO. It seems to me that to move our industry forward by adopting newer and significantly better languages then a new language probably needs some or all of: 1. easy compatibility with a major existing library ecosystem (a simple FFI to any library with a C interface, for example) or a very comprehensive set of standard libraries out of the box and some tolerable way to integrate with more specialised ones 2. compatibility with existing tools or a decent version of the essential tools of its own (where "essential" today probably means something like build system, package manager, debugger, and maybe profiler, plus usable support in editors and things like version control and diff tools) 3. a compelling use case where it is much better than anything out there today, to act as a starting point for everything else to attach to 4. a core group of initial developers who are interested enough to do things with the language and help develop the above.
  - 6700417 7y ago
    Yes, any new language needs to start somewhere, but it’s interesting to think we need new languages for existing domains and that they have any chance of success to begin with. Consider that by many accounts JavaScript, Java, and Python basically dominate in terms of number of developers and mindshare. These languages all arrived 25-30 years ago. I know some rankings claim C/C++ are far more popular than JavaScript but I just haven’t seen evidence of that in recent years. Other widely used languages include C, Objective-C, C++, C# and Ruby. The first three are older than the aforementioned languages, and Ruby is from the same era as Java/JavaScript, and C# isn’t far behind that. In terms of newer languages, the only ones I can think of offhand that seem to have serious traction are Swift and to a lesser extent Go. Some people might throw Kotlin in there, but I’m not sure how much actual traction it’s getting. Rust has been gaining traction slowly for ~8+ years and I’m hopeful it has a bright future but I don’t see a lot of actual projects using it today. The point is that it’s really hard to succeed if your primary reason to exist is to make existing practice slightly better. It’s very hard to displace any of the existing languages in the space of general purpose programming. You need to have libraries. You need to have at least syntax coloring support for several editors. You need language server support for VS Code. You need to generate Dwarf. You probably need a repl or website that allows interactively playing around with the language to get people started. You need enough mindshare that teams can actually hire from a pool of candidates once they get a project underway. You need a compiler with good diagnostics, books, StackOverflow answers for the top N questions people will run into, bloggers who are enthusiastic, etc. Someone posted this on HN recently and I think the speaker does a good job of breaking down the challenges and examining why some languages have found success while others (notably functional languages) have languished on the sidelines: Why isn’t functional programming the norm? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyJZzq0v7Z4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyJZzq0v7Z4
    - galfarragem 7y ago
      Stackoverflow jobs (2019-12-30) tagged as requiring: kotlin: 161/5224 | go: 148/5224 | swift: 97/5224 | rust: 6/5224
    - greggirwin 7y ago

garritfra 7y ago

We want to provide an easy interface to quickly deploy decentralized services. Compared to alternative languages, the overhead to do so is much smaller with Clio

6700417 7y ago

This is pretty much the first question I ask every time I see a new language pop up. The fact is the “language” part of a programming language is the easy part. The hard part is the ecosystem, tooling, mindshare, etc. If your differentiation is “it’s 35% easier to do task A with my new language vs the next best alternative” then I am afraid you’ve lost me and I suspect most potential users. The effort involved in learning your new system isn’t going to be amortized out by the benefits unless the benefits are very substantial. This is coming from someone who really lives to learn new languages and is spending time most everyday working through new problems in new languages out of personal interest. For your average “just wanna get the job done” type you have an even more uphill battle. Having said all that, it can be a great learning experience to build a new language and it’s always possible you’ll influence changes in preexisting systems that do have an existing user base, so I don’t mean to sound too discouraging to aspiring language designers.

garritfra 7y ago
We discussed the problems with the ecosystems and I think you are right. Clio compiles to JavaScript, so it only makes sense to be 100% interoperable with the npm modules out there. We are currently working on that.
Silhouette 7y ago
The fact is the “language” part of a programming language is the easy part. The hard part is the ecosystem, tooling, mindshare, etc. This is certainly true, but on the other hand, any new language that will one day be successful needs to start somewhere, or we're going to be writing systems code in bug-ridden C and line-of-business applications in verbose Java forever. A language where doing day-to-day things would be 35% easier than what I use right now is certainly significantly better, IMHO. It seems to me that to move our industry forward by adopting newer and significantly better languages then a new language probably needs some or all of: 1. easy compatibility with a major existing library ecosystem (a simple FFI to any library with a C interface, for example) or a very comprehensive set of standard libraries out of the box and some tolerable way to integrate with more specialised ones 2. compatibility with existing tools or a decent version of the essential tools of its own (where "essential" today probably means something like build system, package manager, debugger, and maybe profiler, plus usable support in editors and things like version control and diff tools) 3. a compelling use case where it is much better than anything out there today, to act as a starting point for everything else to attach to 4. a core group of initial developers who are interested enough to do things with the language and help develop the above.
- 6700417 7y ago
  Yes, any new language needs to start somewhere, but it’s interesting to think we need new languages for existing domains and that they have any chance of success to begin with. Consider that by many accounts JavaScript, Java, and Python basically dominate in terms of number of developers and mindshare. These languages all arrived 25-30 years ago. I know some rankings claim C/C++ are far more popular than JavaScript but I just haven’t seen evidence of that in recent years. Other widely used languages include C, Objective-C, C++, C# and Ruby. The first three are older than the aforementioned languages, and Ruby is from the same era as Java/JavaScript, and C# isn’t far behind that. In terms of newer languages, the only ones I can think of offhand that seem to have serious traction are Swift and to a lesser extent Go. Some people might throw Kotlin in there, but I’m not sure how much actual traction it’s getting. Rust has been gaining traction slowly for ~8+ years and I’m hopeful it has a bright future but I don’t see a lot of actual projects using it today. The point is that it’s really hard to succeed if your primary reason to exist is to make existing practice slightly better. It’s very hard to displace any of the existing languages in the space of general purpose programming. You need to have libraries. You need to have at least syntax coloring support for several editors. You need language server support for VS Code. You need to generate Dwarf. You probably need a repl or website that allows interactively playing around with the language to get people started. You need enough mindshare that teams can actually hire from a pool of candidates once they get a project underway. You need a compiler with good diagnostics, books, StackOverflow answers for the top N questions people will run into, bloggers who are enthusiastic, etc. Someone posted this on HN recently and I think the speaker does a good job of breaking down the challenges and examining why some languages have found success while others (notably functional languages) have languished on the sidelines: Why isn’t functional programming the norm? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyJZzq0v7Z4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyJZzq0v7Z4
  - galfarragem 7y ago
    Stackoverflow jobs (2019-12-30) tagged as requiring: kotlin: 161/5224 | go: 148/5224 | swift: 97/5224 | rust: 6/5224
  - greggirwin 7y ago