[forgotpwd16]

It may not have a public* release but, over the last decade (starting pre-Zig/Odin), Blow has discussed it extensively in his videos[0], enough that even ~10y was possible for someone to make a toy independent implementation[1].

[0]: https://inductive.no/jai/ [1]: https://github.com/Sharir/jai

*Although there has (always?) been a private alpha/beta release.

[dymk]

Still then, it's a stretch to say that Jai influenced other languages. How could it when only a handful of game-centered applications have been built by a handfull of devs?

Rust and Zig developed features by cutting their teeth on large amounts of real software, not by following one guy's personal project that has no source, no library, no spec available.

[andypants]

Jai, odin and zig's creators are all part of the handmade network, a community of programmers. You are vastly underestimating blow's reach/influence.

Odin's creator has credited Jai as an influence. You can see him in the comments of old jai youtube videos (videos that go into a lot of depth about the language design). Odin's syntax and features are very similar to Jai, the influence is pretty clear. Odin has other influences of course but you could say it's "jai but open source".

Lastly, jai is not open source but it doesn't mean it's not available. You can message blow to get access to it. Many programmers have used it. There are third party jai libraries on github.

[dymk]

I've never heard of Odin or seen any projects written in it, seen a company hire for it, or seen it discussed at a PL conference. There's no stable compiler for it, and no spec. Yeah, I'm just one person, so maybe I'm just in my own bubble, but these are hobby projects with a very small communities.

> Many programmers

...how many?

[stock_toaster]

I'm no fan of Odin, but JangaFX[1] apparently uses it quite a bit. I believe EmberGen[2] is written[3] in Odin.

[1]: https://jangafx.com

[2]: https://jangafx.com/software/embergen

[3]: https://odin-lang.org/showcase/embergen/

[Jensson]

> Still then, it's a stretch to say that Jai influenced other languages. How could it when only a handful of game-centered applications have been built by a handfull of devs?

Lots of people have seen his talks about the language, so why do you think its impossible it influenced other languages?

[dymk]

It's unlikely that the Rust and Zig devs are looking at one guy's gamedev focused vlog compared to feedback from tens of thousands of engineers writing tens of thousands of public projects in Rust and Zig.

Have they heard of Jai? Yeah probably. But it's barely a drop in the bucket as far as the PL design community goes.

[sesm]

So, everybody with a toy Github repo gets a sit in a Rust/Zig design committee?

Not sure about Rust, but Zig seems to explicitly follow Cathedral-style development model.

[dymk]

I'm confused, that's not what I said or implied?

[sesm]

> feedback from tens of thousands of engineers writing tens of thousands of public projects in Rust and Zig