> We have learned things since then. Have you?
We have learned to read the documentation before we judge things.
We have learned to read the documentation before we judge things.
One choice is to just ignore everything, which almost always produces the right answer. But that will miss the thing that would have been worth looking into. Another choice is to try ways to filter out chaff. What is not a possible choice is to dig into everything that might conceivably be interesting.
One thing we can always be sure of: if it is meant to appeal mainly to C coders, it will fall flat, because everybody who is still using C has seen a thousand languages go by and passed on all of them.
If in fact the language would have turned out to be interesting, helping out early might make the difference between its fizzling out or getting traction. And, helping out might be a chance to learn a lot, or to ensure it will scratch your itch.
In this case, for me, none of that seems likely. As usual.
Fair, to a point. But writing an HN comment is a bit lower investment than learning a new language well enough to evaluate it fairly.
> If in fact the language would have turned out to be interesting, helping out early might make the difference between its fizzling out or getting traction.
You may have that kind of pull; I don't. Nobody is going to care whether I like a language or not.
> And, helping out might be a chance to learn a lot, or to ensure it will scratch your itch.
That's somewhat more likely than me helping it gain traction. And, in fact, the earlier the input, the more influence it has at bending the language in the direction you want, because there's fewer voices at that stage. But there are too many potential languages for me to do that with very many of them, so we're back at the problem of choosing which ones to invest in...
(I once did take your approach, with the C++ STL, when was first announced on the newsgroups. It wasn't part of the compiler yet - it was a separate download. I found a bug in the initialization of the random number generator used to random-shuffle vectors. I, some random nobody on the net, emailed Stepanov and Lee, and got three fixes in the next two hours. I was amazed at the response. And the fix made it usable for what I was trying to do with it.
I think that's the only time I've invested in something brand new, though...)
I meant: one could do some of the work needed to make it ready for use. If not done, the language fizzles. Fizzling is the normal fate of any language, absent the miracle.
Hare looks a tiny bit better than C. That was D's problem: it was a tiny bit better than C++; now C++ is much, much better than what D had targeted. If you make Hare enough better than C to merit attention, it will be different enough for the C stalwarts to reject, but not powerful enough for C++ and Rust refugees to wash up onto.
A language made by people who consciously make that tradeoff is almost certainly not worth even trying to learn. At least, if you're looking for a language that will actually act like a force-multiplying lever and save you time. Like, you know, programming languages are meant to do.
Maybe someone not on the team will write a decent review of the language, and we will find out more. Hopefully that person will read the documentation and actually try out the language.
In which case, the developers of this language are demanding that I spend my valuable time trying to read through their documentation to figure out if this language is good for me, in which case I reply: my time is also a gift and you have no right to demand that of me - I'm going to go and look at another language, and suggest that friends and fellow developers do the same.