| Paul Graham is on record that the best languages are built by people who intend to use them, not for others to use. FWIW, I agree. The jury is out on Jai, but it’s clearly not a toy. John emphasizes important stuff: build times, SOA/AOS as a first-class primitive, cache-friendliness in both the L1i and L1d. And he makes pragmatic engineering trade offs informed by modern hardware: you can afford to over-parse a bit if your grammar isn’t insane, this helps a lot in practice on multi-core. The list goes on. And “he made a few good games” is really dismissive. He doesn’t launch a new game every year, but his admittedly short list of projects is 100% wild commercially and critically successful. On budgets that a FAANG spends changing the color of some UI elements. And that’s kind of the point right? Doing better work takes time, and there is in fact a lucrative market for high-quality stuff. As for him being an asshole? He’s aspy and curt and convinced he’s right, which is a bad look on the rare occasions when he’s wrong. But Bryan Armstrong is on the front page doubling-down on such bad treatment of his employees and shareholders that they are in public, written revolt. This may have changed since I looked, but no one is calling him an asshole. A world in which a passionate craftsman misses on diplomacy while discussing serious technical subject matter is an asshole but a well-connected CEO revoking employment offers after people already quit their old job is “making the hard calls” is basically the opposite of everything the word “hacker” stands for. Asshole. |
How is that dismissive? He has indeed made a few good games, but making good games doesn't certify you as a language designer any more than it makes you a good plumber or equinologist. Hollow Knight is my favorite game of all time, immensely successful both critically and commercially, and yet if Team Cherry were to release a programming language I reserve the right not to be terribly excited about it.
> But Bryan Armstrong is on the front page
OK, Bryan Armstrong is an asshole. I can call two people an asshole. I can call more people than that assholes too, if it comes to that.
> Asshole
Because I'm dismissive of Jonathan Blow? Listen, if you want to fanboy/girl your brains out over the guy, be my guest. He just doesn't impress me all that much and I don't think "aspy and curt and convinced he's right" is anything remotely approaching an excuse for poor behavior. I've been told I'm on the autism spectrum, too, yet I manage not to act like an asshole. Though clearly you disagree.