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Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

Unlike other software projects, language design requires a single mind to think holistically, break things when needed, avoid feature creep while at the same time keep doors open for new ideas. It’svery intricate balance. Once language doesn’t have one leader, it will likely die in long term. I would call it death by committee:).

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This is unfounded in practice. Having a BDFL did little to stop Python's feature set from growing, or to prevent design flaws like `lambda`, or to make Python 3 anything other than the poster child for how not to break things. Conversely, we can look to Javascript (yes, Javascript!) as an example of a language that was a total mess after being designed by a single person and that got immeasurably better once it began being designed by committee (yes yes, "ten days" and all that, but I daresay that even Eich would agree with me that the Javascript committee has done a relatively fantastic job).

The reality is that languages are born with a single creator, and spend their adolescence growing under that creator's care, but achieve maturity once they can demonstrate that they can function without such a single point of failure as a BDFL.

I'm curious, and I didn't see any other mention of it in the thread : why do you consider `lambda` to be flawed ? Is it because it has the same scoping rules as functions, and that you consider these scoping rules inappropriate for lambda expressions ?

I think as far as successful languages go, the truth is the opposite. Languages with large design by committee teams are most successful. C++, Java, C, JavaScript or even going back to Cobol and Fortran. The languages with the most use are not typically designed by one person.

I mean, eventually a committee takes over, sure.

But C++ is Stroustrup, Java is Gosling, C is K&R, JavaScript is Eich. Most successful languages kept their internal consistency by being designed by a single person. Historically, these single persons also had mustaches.

Yes, eventually all of those graduated to a design-by-committee approach, but that happened much later. But yes, in that sense, Python is just following the path set by others.

Java's predecessor Oak was created by 13 guys (among them Patrick Naughton, Mike Sheridan, James Gosling and Bill Joy) over 18 months a different then relatively quickly grew to a larger team. (While that project didn't include the language spec itself only, but also runtime and library)

C++ wasn't designed by Stroustrup alone. It's based on C's design.

Sure sometimes you have cleared leaders (see also Perl/Larry Wall) but having a larger group has benefits to see more edge cases (with the risk of committee issues)

C++ was Stroustrup before C++89, Java was Gosling until about 1.5, C was K&R before C89, JavaScript was Eich until ES3.

So, all around 20 to 30 years ago.

I disagree that such languages will die, but they might become designless frankensteins that draw their life energy from sources best left unexplored (see: Java, HTML)

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