[CoderCV]

Another programming language. God! I have no idea - what's happening to the world?

Are people not skilled enough to propose or send commits to an existing or alternative programming language?

There is Rust, Go, Julia, Clojure, and many other...

What is the primary reason to create a new programming language?

[annywhey]

Another "too many programming languages" comment. God! I have no idea - what's happening to the world? Are people not skilled enough to evaluate new languages?

There are new type systems and static checks, integrated build systems and package managers, backwards-compatibility features, debugging tools...

What is the primary reason to complain about new programming languages?

[coldtea]

>Are people not skilled enough to propose or send commits to an existing or alternative programming language?

How would those "alternative programming languages" you propose have been created if people followed your "advice"?

We'd still be sending patches to C and C++ or perhaps Algol?

>What is the primary reason to create a new programming language?

1) Because you feel like it and you don't need to have approval for anybody to do so.

2) Because you want to explore some particular syntax/semantics combination other languages don't offer.

3) As a training exercise.

4) To cover some very specific needs you have, and don't like how other languages do it.

5) To introduce some new ideas into PL design, which might or might not be adopted by users or by a more mainstream language.

[eksemplar]

C++ had a purpose though, to create object oriented C. A lot of these modern languages seem to be mainly made because someone could.

With so many there is also a very low chance of any of them actually picking up because the useless ones drown out the C++es.

I think people should do what they want though. If you want to make a programming language you should, just don’t expect everyone to view your endeavors as useful.

As far as your fifth point goes, new languages aren’t a good way to influence programming in general. Stuff like lambdas weren’t born in some hipster language, they came from JavaScript. Because if you want to influence, you have to make sure people actually see your stuff.

That being said. Making a PL language is a much better use of your time than whining on HN.

[lopatin]

> Stuff like lambdas weren’t born in some hipster language, they came from JavaScript.

They did not come from JS. JS took them from Scheme. Scheme took them from ... lambda calculus? Anyways, not knocking on JS, but they did not invent lambdas by any stretch of the imagination. I do agree with the rest of your comment btw.

[eksemplar]

I didn’t mean to imply that JS invented it, I meant to imply JS made them popular to the masses.

[forgotpwd16]

>Stuff like lambdas weren’t born in some hipster language, they came from JavaScript.

Lambdas predate JavaScript by decades. Basically according to your reasoning JS shouldn't exist. It was created by Netscape to compete in the web browser market with Microsoft script language the moment you had Python, Ruby, Pike etc. There were no afaik novel concepts to be found in JS.

[eksemplar]

Before JavaScript embraces lambdas, everyone thought they were a bad idea. You could say something similar about jit.

I know JS gets a lot of hate on hn, but if you look at the history of a lot of modern pl paradigms, many of them got traction after years of ridicule because JavaScript brought them to the masses.

[toyg]

Python had lambda in 1994. JS didn’t even exist then.

Face it - people use JS because the browser happened, not because it’s original in any meaningful way.

[eksemplar]

JS didn’t invent lambdas, it made them popular. Or is it just a coincidence that every major language that didn’t have them, adopted them after they got real use in JS?

[pjmlp]

Everyone that never put their foot into a CS degree.

Even Clipper had support for closures.

[eriktate]

>"Stuff like lambdas weren’t born in some hipster language, they came from JavaScript"

Lambdas are actually so hipster that they were cool before we even had programming languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus

As far as I know, Lisp was the first language to actually implement the idea. I actually struggle to think of any language concepts that were introduced by Javascript.

I also tend to disagree with the overall sentiment that new languages aren't a good way to influence programming. Haskell, for example, is quite a departure from a language like C. I don't think we would've ended up with the great, proven options we have today if everything was just incremental changes on some base. Sometimes you need to rethink things from scratch. It's part of the reason we don't have one language that fits perfectly for all problem sets.

[pjmlp]

C++ initial purpose was for Bjarne never to write plain C code, after his experience rewriting his nice Simula code into BCPL, he swore never to use such low level languages again.

There are plenty of interviews where he tells how C with Classes came to be.

[flohofwoe]

Many of those new languages are created because C++ failed to improve C in the areas that really matter:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7724

[pjmlp]

Actually it improved, what C++ compilers cannot prevent is for people to write C code with a C++ compiler, beyond outlawing it as bad practice.

Copy-paste compatibility with C is a burden on modern computing, but it was also what contributed to C++'s adoption during the early 90's.

[tragomaskhalos]

Suspect that in the majority of cases it's a bit like people inventing their own (human) constructed language - it's an interesting intellectual exercise in its own right and allows the inventor to indulge in a bit of wish fulfilment by emphasising features that they personally value.

As in the human conlang case, it would be alarming or bizarre if the inventor genuinely expected others to start coding in their language, especially if it has no compelling features that are not found elsewhere: although Perl, C++, Rust and others came primarily from motivated individuals "scratching an itch", those langs were able to flourish because they fill(ed) an empty evolutionary niche.

What I do find peculiar is other people then piling in with all sorts of suggestions for enhancements and tweaks that imply that the particular hobby language in question does have a legit future out in the field.

[flohofwoe]

Rust, Go, Swift, etc... are like super-tankers compared to those small "better-C" languages. IMHO, having a number of small languages that can be learned in an afternoon is much better than yet another super-tanker designed by huge consensus-driven committees/communities that try to do everything for everybody.

[carlmr]

Rust has safety and zero-cost abstractions at it's core, they provide a by now quite stable interface. You can't just move fast and break things. You need to stabilize at some point or it's impossible to use it in real world projects that are also commitments of a certain kind. And for that stability you need some kind of consensus of what to work on and what not to do.

I think the primary value of these new toy languages is they can explore aspects freely that can't just be explored in a more mature language. Sometimes after a concept has proven useful a mature language might be willing to incorporate it.

But I wouldn't use them on a serious project, because there will probably be few libraries and maybe no long term support for it.

[bendmorris]

These are valid concerns, particularly stability and long term support. Availability of libraries applies less to Kit or Zig thanks to first-class interoperability with C. I think this is the way forward for small new languages; you can avoid the challenge of creating an entire ecosystem for your language, and just fit it into an existing one.

[eriktate]

I'm surprised that you would lump Go in as a "super-tanker" language. I find it incredibly small and simplistic when compared to something like Rust. I think it actually has fewer keywords than C.

[renox]

Go the language OK but Go rely on a GC which required lots of work..

[bendmorris]

>Are people not skilled enough to propose or send commits to an existing or alternative programming language?

I'll just comment on this part. I'm a contributor to Haxe (not so mainstream perhaps but more so than Kit.) Kit was a chance to try out some features that don't fit in well to Haxe (and in fact I did propose several of these features as additions to Haxe, and they were explicitly rejected.) Sometimes the answer really is to write a new language, because language simplicity is still important and one language can't be everything to everyone.

And of course, Haxe wouldn't exist if its creator hadn't been unsatisfied with existing languages at the time...

[AndyKelley]

> Oh shit everything is already made guess I'll watch Netflix while I wait to die

have fun with that

[efficax]

I also find the march of new languages a little exhausting. But I handle that by just taking a glance at them and moving on. Kit never has to trouble me again and I'll have already forgotten it by the time I hit reply here. And my life will go on.

[otabdeveloper1]

> What is the primary reason to create a new programming language?

The reason is that creating a new programming language is easier than learning C++.

For this same reason none of these languages will ever amount to anything useful. If you have the patience and foresight to bring a new programming language to fruition, then you have the patience and foresight to learn C++. You grow up and start programming in a real language.

[bendmorris]

I, uh...I know a little C++ :)

I like to think that when I'm writing Kit, I'm writing C, so I am writing in a "real language." Total interop, no real drawbacks.