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> Might be a little off topic, but what’s with the ”written in” obsession? From my perspective it’s so irrelevant compared to well tested, design, architectured, community engagement, track record, performance and usability. As far as I am concerned there is one aspect where I think it is relevant for me, as I compile all software that runs on my machine. If it written in C or in C++, there are good chances that I won't need to compile an horrible chain of dependencies (or most likely, try and fail at compile that chain). That matters to me, because I try a lot of alternative/niche/toy languages, and if I consider those published within, say, the last ten years, half of them won't even compile. It is a disaster. If it is written in shell + C, I can fix a couple errors easily (if there are more I give up because there is no point in wasting my time on something that claims to be next programming marvel and yet is itself programmed like shit). People want to be fancy and pick up toolchains that are not battle-tested like Autotools+C or CMake+C++, and that's the recipe for pain. For example, today I tried to compile two languages written in Ada, and I had to give up. A mess. Each time I tried to build an Ada project which wasn't mine, it has been horrible. That's antinomic to the image of Ada (clean and strict to the point of being stiff) but that's my repeated experience with building. I am not even talking about the anti-feature which is compilers which are written in the very language they aim to compile and do not even provide a bootstrapping minimal compiler written in C or similarly fundamental and widespread language. They're generally very proud of their accomplishment :-/ So yes, a project in C (or C++) offers the best chances of success (for building, which is the point I developed here). Also, considering toy language, I often want to make a dirty hack to add a missing features. If it is written, say, in Haskell, there is zero chance I can do it. Good old imperative languages like C, Python, Pascal, I have a chance and I have already done it. There is also the case of all the languages built over the JVM. There are really many. But even when they look good to me, they are limited by the opinionated choices of the JVM, and I don't wanna undergo the multiple programming neuroses of Gosling. Also anything Java based has always been terribly, awfully, painfully, excruciatingly slow on any of my machines; I suppose it not an universal experience, but it has always been mine. ------ > compared to well tested, design, architectured, community engagement, track record, performance and usability. To each is own: I care about well tested, usability, and depending on the intended use, performance. I also care a lot about proper exhaustive documentation, which is missing from your list and from most programming languages projects. But I don't give a damn about its design and architecture, what matters to me is the external features, not the internals. Language designers care way too much about the internals and neglect the outside, which is what matters to the end user. I don't care if it make your parser more complicated, it if makes your grammar irregular, if you need more passes, if you need to dirty your hands with context; I want that source code using your language flows, for writing and for reading. Community? I don't really care, and I have seen it being detrimental to many projects, which lose their compass by wanting to incorporate every feature request and following the mood of the year; I'd rather they were developed between closed doors and only published when they reach beta status, to maintain consistency, instead of jumping from an unpolished feature to the next. I am aware that's totally against the current trend, where people publish repositories with a README.md before writing the first line of code or documentation :-) |
>To each is own: I care about well tested, usability, and depending on the intended use, performance. I also care a lot about proper exhaustive documentation, which is missing from your list and from most programming languages projects.
~But I don't give a damn about its design and architecture, what matters to me is the external features, not the internals. Language designers care way too much about the internals and neglect the outside, which is what matters to the end user. I don't care if it make your parser more complicated, it if makes your grammar irregular, if you need more passes, if you need to dirty your hands with context; I want that source code using your language flows, for writing and for reading.
I think there's a disconnect here between good design and architecture and the result of it. You can't by definition have a good design and architecture that makes your program difficult to use and illogical externally. You can't have good tests without a good design and architecture. Good design and architecture goes hand in hand with usability too.
To go into a deep dive is beyond the scope here. But concisely said, good designs and architectures makes the software easy to understand and easy to change to external changes of requirements. Since its easy to reason about it's also easy to understand and reason about bugs when they inevitably shows up. If the software does not have these features, it does not have a good designs and architecture. You might think a certain architect cares more about the internals then the external, but then the architect is bad, and should study and should step back a step and think about the end user and heading of the software project. Or perhaps there's a communication issue going on, human <-> human style.
Good designs and architectures also is the equivalent, actually superior to, having good documentation. Documentation that defines the external goals are not required if you have good tests that shows them. Hell documentation about the code is not needed if the design and architecture is good. And the self documenting code can never lie. Is it difficult to achieve? Yes. But not trying will put you into a corner you can't get out of and inevitably lead to the rewrite-from-scratch. Unless of course you have a very strictly defined end goal and complete definition of done, but you could still paint yourself into a very difficult corner to get out of.
>Community? I don't really care, and I have seen it being detrimental to many projects, which lose their compass by wanting to incorporate every feature request and following the mood of the year; I'd rather they were developed between closed doors and only published when they reach beta status, to maintain consistency, instead of jumping from an unpolished feature to the next. I am aware that's totally against the current trend, where people publish repositories with a README.md before writing the first line of code or documentation :-)
Not sure i see the correlation between pushing readmes with intent and publishing unfinished feature upon unfinished feature. Isn't readme:s infact documentation? Well well :p i believe you can work in the open without jumping to unfinished feature to unfinished feature. Polish can come in the middle of a development cycle, not just the end. A vibrant community around a software also is equivalent with many contributors etc, which makes the software resilient to people moving to other things etc.
I might have sounded critical, but enjoyed reading your response. Thank you for your response :) I also believe you gave me clues to why the "written in" header is so popular.
The way you interpret certain values i gave was also insightful. I certainly don't have the same opinions, but non the less i can see where you come from. So i just had to respond to it :) Thank you!